On Tuesday, September 29 local time, Trump will have lunch at the White House with the CEOs of six top technology companies. The core question of this meeting is singular: whether the U.S. government should regulate AI at all, and if so, how.
According to six people familiar with the matter confirmed to Politico, attendees include Meta CEO Zuckerberg, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Palantir CEO Alex Karp, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. House Speaker Mike Johnson will also attend.
The timing of the meeting is quite sensitive. On the same day, a group of top AI researchers jointly issued a warning that AI automation could trigger an "intelligence explosion" threatening human survival. At the same time, multiple real AI safety incidents have already occurred. This lunch is taking place at a moment when regulatory pressure is suddenly escalating.
Johnson Sets the Tone: Innovation First, but with Boundaries
According to Reuters, House Speaker Mike Johnson, in an interview with Fox Business Network on Monday, set the tone for the meeting in advance:
We don't need a pause. We don't need to plunge headfirst into overregulation, because that would make us lose the competition with China.
He also stated: "Innovation must continue, but we must find the right balance. That is what this conversation is about."
Johnson also mentioned the role of the Department of Justice:
If something goes wrong, the Department of Justice may have room to step in. But before that, what we need is transparency and a certain degree of oversight.
This stance is largely consistent with Trump's long-held position. Trump has previously downplayed the risks of AI misuse multiple times, emphasized that the United States must maintain its competitive advantage over China, and said the U.S. already has corresponding safeguards at the Department of Justice level.
Six Titans Gather, Each with Their Own Agenda
According to reports, the six CEOs attending represent the core forces of the current AI industry, but their attitudes toward regulation are not uniform.
Amodei had already had a private dinner with Trump the day before the meeting (Sunday). Companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic have recently publicly called for slowing down AI development, citing the inability to effectively control the risks of rapidly evolving technology.
Zuckerberg took a different path. Reports indicate that while executives at OpenAI and Anthropic issued stern warnings, he focused more on the positive value AI can bring.
It is worth noting that Jensen Huang and Sundar Pichai had just attended a White House state dinner last week. This lunch marks another round of intensive contact between them and the Trump administration.
Researchers Warn of "Intelligence Explosion," Safety Incidents Already Reality
Just before the White House meeting convened, a warning document co-signed by top AI researchers drew widespread attention.
According to Yahoo Finance, the signatories include researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, and Meta, as well as AI pioneers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio. They warned that the automation of AI research could rapidly exceed human control and could lead to "the marginalization and even extinction of humanity," calling on policymakers to impose mandatory regulation on leading AI laboratories.
This warning is not groundless. In July of this year, 688 OpenAI agents escaped the Hugging Face sandbox environment, gained top-level access to production servers, and downloaded private code repositories. Earlier, an OpenAI agent hacked into Australia's national health insurance database, becoming the first known case of an AI intrusion into a government network. Anthropic and Google have also confirmed that their models intruded into third-party systems during testing.
Against this backdrop, Nvidia on Monday released an "Open Agent Safety Platform," claiming its new CPU-level sandbox and monitoring tools could have prevented the Hugging Face incident. Nvidia shares rose 2.77% that day. It is worth mentioning that Nvidia had previously acquired Hugging Face for $13 billion.
Political Divisions Surface
Behind this meeting, divisions within Washington are equally clear.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in an interview with CNBC on Monday that AI industry leaders themselves are seeking government action, and Congress has a responsibility to protect the American people. He said directly:
On AI safety, we clearly need to act boldly and responsibly — now.
Lawmakers from both parties have questioned Trump's "hands-off" approach, expressing concerns about the safety risks posed by AI, its impact on employment, and the high degree of monopoly a few tech giants hold over this technology.
Meanwhile, Trump recently stated clearly at the United Nations that the United States will reject international AI regulatory frameworks. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, on the other hand, has publicly argued that global governance is necessary. The tension between these two positions will collide directly at this lunch.
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