Anthropic and administration clashed over AI guardrails for over a year
President Donald Trump and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei are scheduled to hold a private dinner at the White House on Sunday evening, in their first face-to-face meeting, according to people familiar with the matter. While Trump has championed U.S. progress in advanced artificial intelligence, his administration has been critical of Anthropic and its push to increase oversight of AI models. A White House official reiterated Trump’s view that the U.S. must remain the pre-eminent AI superpower and that the machines must be oriented toward protecting American interests and consumers.
The planned meeting comes weeks after Amodei called for leading U.S. AI companies to slow the pace of development. Anthropic and the administration have feuded over appropriate guardrails for over a year, a battle many in the industry call self-defeating because Anthropic is one of the top U.S. AI developers.
The Defense Department labeled Anthropic a security risk in February, after the company objected to the use of its AI in autonomous weapons and surveillance, and barred the firm from working with the federal government. A federal appeals court upheld the Pentagon’s designation Friday, while a California court struck down the broader government ban. The White House in June forced Anthropic to shut down access to two of its models over security concerns for two and a half weeks.
Tom Brown, an Anthropic co-founder and the company’s chief compute officer, has been leading many of its interactions with the administration after helping resolve that shutdown. Brown is expected to attend a Tuesday event featuring AI-industry leaders focused on the technology and a new government website connecting citizens to federal services, according to people familiar with the matter.
The dinner could represent an opening for Anthropic to repair its relationship with the administration as the company prepares a mega initial public offering expected later this year. Trump advisers have been critical of Amodei, and the Pentagon earlier this year labeled the company a security risk.
After an Anthropic researcher quit and warned that AI could wipe out humanity — a message echoed by some of his former colleagues — many Trump advisers criticized the company for lobbying for favorable regulation and pushed back against such “doomers.”
In an interview on the influential “All In” podcast earlier this month, Trump dismissed the warnings. “The robots will not be taking over. The AI will not be taking over the rest of the world. The whole thing is a hoax,” Trump said. He added that “we have to be a little careful,” but said “that doesn’t mean we are going to stop an industry.”
The international backdrop sharpened last week. Altman and Amodei called for international standards and regulation during back-to-back testimony before the United Nations General Assembly. Without global coordination, Amodei said, “AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole.” In his own address to world leaders at the U.N., Trump reiterated that the U.S. “totally rejects” any attempt to build a global framework for the regulation of AI.
A number of tech CEOs — including Elon Musk of SpaceX, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Google’s Sundar Pichai — joined Trump last week during a state dinner with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Amodei did not attend.
The dinner was previously reported by Axios.