Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, has had a highly visible weekend. On the season premiere of Saturday Night Live, he was the subject of satire, and this evening he is scheduled to dine with President Donald Trump at the White House. Axios was the first to report on Amodei's dinner plans, and other outlets later confirmed the story. This marks the first one-on-one encounter between the two men, who have recently been at odds in the debate over AI safety. Amodei put forward a proposal to slow down AI development—or at least to move ahead with greater caution—while Trump has claimed, without providing evidence, that the backlash against AI is a Democratic hoax; he also wants to rebrand the technology as "super intelligence."

Even before this latest exchange, Amodei and Anthropic had a complicated relationship with Trump's administration. Earlier this year, the Pentagon labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk after the company tried to establish guardrails for how its technology is used (Anthropic has been contesting that designation in court), though other officials in the administration have taken a more amicable stance.