Donald Trump held a lunch at the White House at 12:30 p.m. Eastern Time yesterday with executives from several artificial intelligence companies, according to BlockBeats.
Those in attendance included Jensen Huang, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai, and Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei.
Trump turns to Musk on AI and jobs
After the lunch, Trump and a group of U.S. AI executives took questions from reporters in an impromptu media exchange. When a reporter asked whether AI is crowding out jobs, Trump called on Musk to respond.
Musk first instinctively said "AI," then immediately corrected himself to "SI." Trump caught the detail and thanked him repeatedly.
Musk then said robots and superintelligence could bring major improvements for humanity in areas including healthcare. On employment, he said AI will bring major changes to the form of jobs and the nature of work in the future, but added that overall, "the need for people is still very great."
Amodei repeats his call to slow AI development
Amodei again referred to his earlier argument for slowing AI development. BlockBeats said that position is at odds with Trump’s views.
Amodei said AI offers huge benefits, but the technology also carries real risks, and discussions are still ongoing over how to address them. He again stressed, "We need to work together to make sure we can win safely."
Awkward moment draws attention
During the exchange, community reaction broadly focused on the contrast between Musk’s calm answers and Amodei’s visibly tense demeanor, according to BlockBeats.
While introducing Amodei to reporters, Trump said, "Dario is great, whatever he says is okay."
Amodei responded with a noticeably exaggerated laugh, then pulled back his smile in an unnatural way, lowered his head, and stopped speaking. The moment briefly turned awkward.