It’s turning out to be quite a week for artificial intelligence, as far as its treatment by both public sector and private sector leaders.

The first news that caught my eye was that last night, the president had dinner with none other than Dario Amodei, who he had previously characterized as “pretending to be a perfect little angel” due to Amodei’s reservations about runaway AI. The White House seems to have none of those reservations, but many legislators from both sides of the aisle have voiced concerns, and as for data centers, they are so bipartisanly unpopular that common attack ads for the midterms feature some candidate or other going along with plans to build them.

As for Amodei’s public warnings about the pace of change, these are a matter of public record. His company, Anthropic, tried to limit the use of its Claude model by the U.S. Department of Defense, to exclude two specific things: mass spying on American citizens, and completely autonomous lethal weapons. The Pentagon, strangely enough, didn’t bite, and the Hegseth regime insisted on pursuing “all legal uses.”

Then, the last few weeks, as less senior engineers left companies like Anthropic citing fears of AGI, Amodei added his two cents:

“AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole,” he said, according to a Reuters report. He said more, which is behind a Reuters paywall. Essentially, he was giving the world another warning.

The president didn’t like it, and fired off some abrasive stuff on Truth Social . But CBS coverage by Jo Ling Kent confirms the two had dinner last night, although details have been released.

Sino-U.S. Relations: Sept. 28 Edition

Also, Chinese president Xi Jinping visited the U.S. last week. CBS reported Saturday :

“China and the United States agreed to establish a channel for handling AI-related incidents and accelerate work on military crisis communications following a three-day summit between President Xi Jinping and President Trump in Washington, the two governments said Saturday.”

It was a timely meeting, since the number one goal of the president and others is to beat China to the punch. Nevertheless, it’s expected that some common goals will come out of that face-to-face meeting.

Here’s another planned event that CBS apparently learned about from reviewing the invitations: Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown and Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar are expected to attend what Trump has allegedly referred to as “an extraordinary gathering of America’s greatest leaders, builders, innovators, and citizens.”

Again, details are scant, but AI is supposed to be on the agenda, as participants think about American ingenuity and invention.

CBS coverage provides this additional note from the invitation:

“This will be more than an event. It will be a first look at America’s future.”

Whoever ends up being there, it would be surprising if this didn’t get picked up by the press. Right now, nearly everyone is thinking about the crossroads that we are approaching, as humans, and the colossal power of AI to change our lives.

Brainstorming at Mountain View

This whole controversy did not go unnoticed at the Imagination in Action “The Next Endeavor” event at Mountain View, where so many speakers, panelists and guests had thoughts about AI.

I was writing up a summary of a panel that I saw moderated by friend Dave Blundin, also a co-worker at Link Ventures (disclaimer: I also am part of IIA and help run the events) where Blundin invited panelists to talk about the perception of AI in government and elsewhere, and some folks mentioned Dario Amodei in particular. That was just one of various segments where related news came up, as our folks kept going over the details of what’s happening right now in a fast-paced industry.

Amodei is in the headlines right now, in a big way. How did he get on with the president at dinner? I guess we’ll see. Keep an eye out for more on collaborative approaches to the future, because they are sure to be forthcoming.