President Trump presided over a two-hour luncheon in the East Room on Tuesday for some of the country’s most notable A.I. executives. The best seats were next to him and went to two of the world’s most powerful tech titans, Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Elon Musk of Tesla and Space X.
Mark Zuckerberg of Meta was also seated in the inner circle, one spot removed from Mr. Trump. Sundar Pichai of Google was one seat away from Mr. Trump too. There was room for 34 at the table, including the president. But the seating chart that Mr. Trump posted on social media illustrated growing divisions within the artificial intelligence industry and how it is viewed by the White House.
Some of the biggest proponents of aggressive regulation — including Dario Amodei of Anthropic — were relegated to the far reaches of the table, while Mr. Musk and Mr. Huang had prominent seats, with each man flanking Mr. Trump. The meeting also included top officials, such as Speaker Mike Johnson and Vice President JD Vance, who believe that formalized safeguards would hurt American competitiveness.
The A.I. leaders did seem to find common ground. After the luncheon, they signed an accord promising to make their systems safe by committing to internal risk policies and outside audits. The agreement, company insiders said, was table stakes.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing