Senior Trump administration officials met Tuesday with Anthropic PBC's top Washington executive to discuss artificial intelligence safety risks. Anthropic's chief compute officer Tom Brown, who has become the face of the company in Washington, spoke virtually with Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. According to people familiar with the matter, Brown emerged on the Washington scene earlier this summer, leading high-stakes negotiations with US officials to lift export controls that were placed on Anthropic's most advanced AI models. Brown succeeded in that task and spoke publicly alongside Lutnick at a tech-focused G20 summit earlier this month, making a point to praise Trump's support for data centers. However, a Department of Defense official said it "maintains contact with frontier AI companies. Although the department's stance on Anthropic has not changed."
Major technology leaders have escalated calls for coordinated action to slow the development of increasingly powerful AI systems, with Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, publishing an essay 'We Must Pace the Frontier' calling for industrywide cooperation to address growing safety concerns. Executives at OpenAI, SpaceX and Microsoft have also echoed these concerns and called for some sort of pause in AI development. The coordinated response comes after an Anthropic employee resigned, stating AI companies were gambling with humanity's future, which skyrocketed fears about doomsday scenarios tied to increasingly powerful technology. OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman told Fortune that it was an 'ill-advised moment' for an initial public offering, saying the company won't list this year. SoftBank Group shares plunged 11% on Monday amid the growing concerns about AI safety. According to The New York Times, the divisions are increasingly defining the debate over AI, with technology executives now setting themselves against President Trump, who has rejected their calls to slow down.
Anthropic has unilaterally committed to using independent third-party monitors to ensure AI development safety, with Amodei stating 'Anthropic is unilaterally committing to this step now,' and OpenAI saying it would follow suit. Microsoft published a 'humanist' code of conduct' on Monday, committing to ensuring its models 'will never resist human interruption, correction, or shutdown.' Amodei's proposals include working with democracies to set safety standards and finding ways to ensure Chinese entities also comply. Microsoft posted a provisional code of conduct that would place restrictions on its future AI models, coming after leading AI firms Anthropic and OpenAI called for a slowdown in AI advancement. Anthropic reportedly disclosed its second consecutive profitable quarter with revenue for the second quarter surging past $11.5 billion as it prepares to go public.
President Trump has launched a fresh attack on AI safety critics, accusing them of recycling 'the same fear tactics used over climate change' in a Truth Social post. Trump called both AI warnings and data center concerns 'a hoax' and labeled critics 'Revolutionaries for a Bad and Evil Cause', warning that 'soon you'll find out they're working for people that do not have the best interests of the United States in mind!'. The president's latest broadside follows his surprise appearance at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, where he used a phone call with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang to dismiss AI safety concerns as 'a hoax' and a 'scam'. Speaking to thousands of attendees, Trump declared that 'the robots are not going to be taking over the world. The AI will not be taking over the rest of the world. The whole thing is a hoax'. Trump said in a post to his Truth Social network Monday that his presidency is the only safety guardrail needed for AI, adding that slowing down AI is a bad idea that would only serve US adversaries like China.
Worries about the potential dangers of advanced AI went mainstream over the past week after the high-profile departure of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who accused AI companies of 'gambling with our lives' in a resignation post he shared on social media. OpenAI's global policy chief Chris Lehane said his company has been engaging with Anthropic and Google DeepMind for several weeks on AI safety concerns. 'It's better to try to work together to prioritize safety,' Lehane said at a Tuesday briefing in Washington. At Salesforce Inc.'s annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, Amodei, Altman and Nvidia Corp. CEO Jensen Huang all weighed in on the topic, while an AI gathering in Washington saw progressive Senator Bernie Sanders and ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon share rare common ground as both warned that AI companies are jeopardizing human interests. Michael, who has led Pentagon efforts to accelerate AI adoption across the military, has publicly rejected Coxon's claim that AI could kill all humans, while Lutnick is eager to push back on negative messaging about the technology ahead of the midterms in November.
The facilities, which house servers and specialized chips used to train and run advanced AI models, are being built across the United States at an unprecedented pace. Companies including NVIDIA, OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are investing billions of dollars in AI infrastructure to meet soaring demand for computing power. However, opposition has been growing in many parts of the country due to concerns about enormous electricity requirements and strain on local water supplies used for cooling. Community groups have also objected to noise from large facilities, pressure on power grids, land-use disputes, and environmental impact associated with rapidly expanding energy demand. A Fox News poll found 70% of registered voters opposed having an AI data center built in their area. House Speaker Mike Johnson has warned that sweeping restrictions could give Beijing an advantage as the two countries compete for technological dominance. Johnson said 'We have to resist Congress jumping in and imposing some sort of emergency moratorium', instead calling for AI platform leaders to meet with lawmakers and strike a balance between innovation and safety.
