WASHINGTON: U.S. President Donald Trump will host a meeting Tuesday with House Speaker Mike Johnson and tech executives like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Anthropic's Dario Amodei to discuss AI, as calls ramp up for more regulation of the fast-developing technology.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI President Greg Brockman are also expected to attend, according to separate sources familiar with the planning.
The gathering will focus on finding a balance between innovation and oversight, Republican Johnson said on Monday, as concerns about rogue AI agents' potential to harm humans have seeped into the public consciousness, boosting calls for regulation. Trump has called the fears of AI's threat to humanity a "hoax."
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the goals or topics for the meeting.
Pressure is rising on the Trump administration to take action after OpenAI and Anthropic reported their AI agents had gone rogue and hacked into customers' systems without instructions to do so. The intrusions prompted researchers to warn that some AI developers believe the technology could kill humans within a decade, fueling calls for action from both Democratic and Republican lawmakers.
Trump has repeatedly downplayed concerns about AI, stressing the importance of maintaining America's competitive edge over China and pointing to the Justice Department as a pre-existing guardrail for AI. Johnson echoed those sentiments in an interview with Fox Business Network on Monday.
"We do not need a moratorium. We do not need to jump in and hyper-regulate this, because we'll lose the race to China," he said. "The innovation is important to continue, but we have to strike the right balance. That's what the conversation is going to be about."
But a nationwide Reuters/Ipsos poll from September 17 to 20 shows some 73% of respondents worry that AI companies haven't done enough to prevent AI from causing serious harm to society, and 55% of people said it would be good to slow AI development.
Under an executive order signed by Trump in June, AI developers are asked to voluntarily submit "covered frontier models" to the U.S. government for review up to 30 days before releasing them to trusted partners.
The meeting also comes after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the White House last week for talks with Trump that revealed divergent views on AI. While Trump on social media insisted Xi agreed with his plan to "leave it exactly where it is," Xi appeared to favor a more hands-on approach.
“We have both the capability and responsibility to develop and manage AI for good, and ensure that the development of AI is always under human control and serves the well-being of the people,” Xi said.
