After weeks of Washington being gripped by a new wave of fear about artificial intelligence gone awry, the Trump administration will take a sharply different take Tuesday, seeking to convince a skeptical public that the nation is instead about to embark on a tech-powered “golden age.”
President Donald Trump will deliver a speech launching America.gov, a new portal for accessing public services, part of a day-long event featuring members of his Cabinet and tech executives. AI company leaders are also set to meet with the president and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana).
The events come at a pivotal moment for the technology. AI firms say their latest systems have become increasingly powerful, showing signs of being able to design their own more-potent successors. But companies have struggled to keep control of the technology, as rogue AI agents have hacked into company and government systems, and a roster of top industry figures have warned that the end result could be catastrophic for humanity.
Last week, it was disclosed that the federal government itself had been a victim, with a handful of websites probed by AI agents deployed by ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. (The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.)
Yet even as the public’s concerns have grown and Democrats in Congress have pressed for regulation, Trump has largely dismissed the risk, calling it a “hoax.”
Tuesday’s events are a chance for the administration to focus on the upsides of the technology, propelling a different narrative than the warnings introduced by company CEOs in recent weeks. AI’s many boosters expect it will invigorate the economy, push the boundaries of science and help cure diseases. But that message has found only limited traction with a public worried about job losses and rogue bots sowing chaos online.
Johnson said Monday that his goal for the meeting is to find a “balance.”
“We want to keep America’s lead over China and all of our other competitors, but we want to make sure that it’s being done in a safe way,” Johnson said in an interview with Fox Business. “So, a little oversight, a little transparency, I think would go a long way here.”
As the industry has tried to navigate those concerns, the private summit between tech CEOs, the president and the speaker could be the most consequential part of the day, giving officials and executives a chance to discuss a common vision.
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei led the industry this month in issuing a call to slow the pace of development to better focus on safety. But the idea has divided his peers and has not been endorsed by the White House.
Amodei, who previously clashed with the administration over the use of his company’s technology by the military, dined with the president late Sunday in their first one-on-one meeting. He is expected back at the White House Tuesday to attend the private meeting.
Amodei will be joined by Jensen Huang, the chief executive of chipmaker Nvidia, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, according to people familiar with their plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting. Both have resisted calls for any coordinated slowdown, saying it is up to individual companies to ensure that their products are safe. Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google, is also expected to attend, according to a person familiar with his plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said Monday he would not attend but will meet with some of the participants later in the week.
Trump recently said he plans to name a new AI czar and create an “AI Force,” although its role is unclear. The president made clear at a speech to the United Nations General Assembly last week that he wants to see the United States continue to race ahead — rebrandingthe technology as “super intelligence.”
“I’m not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution,” he said.
Fears about AI took on new urgency in Washington in early September, when a researcher quit Anthropic and said the technology could bring about human extinction. Many lawmakers said they wanted to take action to impose guardrails, but Congress is set to leave ahead of the midterm elections without advancing any legislation.
In the absence of formal federal leadership, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google — the companies at the cutting-edge — have discussed creating their own group to set standards for the industry. In the meantime, OpenAI said it was pausing training of its powerful systems until it was confident it had more safeguards in place and also announced Monday it will cancel a planned model release because of safety concerns.
The decision to pause training was announced Friday, when the company also confirmed that its agents accessed information from the Census Bureau using a log-in found online and copied information from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Transluce, an AI research organization, said agents had also tried to hack into an Education Department civil rights website.
“People want to know AI is being developed safely, and that starts with what companies like ours do ourselves,” said OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri, adding that the company “will resume training only when we are confident that we have additional safeguards in place.”
But on Monday, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) asked a court to step in and force the company to pause development work, in a sign of how Republicans are split on their approach to the technology. Uthmeier, whose office has sued OpenAI, alleging it has put children at risk, said he was inviting company chief executive Sam Altman to join his request.
“If he will not, we ask the court to do what OpenAI will not do for itself — protect Florida families,” Uthmeier said in a video posted Monday to social media.
Theodoric Meyer contributed to this report.
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