Sam Altman got a private audience with President Donald Trump backstage at last week’s Republican National Convention. Days later, Trump was telling crowds that AI safety fears are a hoax.
Three people familiar with the encounter said that Altman was the one who asked for the meeting. Their brief summary described a conversation about how much influence AI now wields.
A Public Hoax, A Private Audience
The timing is awkward for Trump’s messaging. Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei urged developers over the weekend to pace the next leap in model capability. Altman joined that industry slowdown push alongside Elon Musk.
Trump has dismissed those warnings all week. He phoned Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang live on stage at the All-In Summit, a Silicon Valley investor conference, on Monday. There, he repeated his hoax framing to a room of investors.
“I’m telling you it’s all a hoax. The data centers are great. They make people wealthy. They make states wealthy…”
— Donald Trump.
However, Nvidia shares still fell three percent that day, and chip stocks broadly slid as investors priced in an AI spending slowdown regardless of Trump’s endorsement.
The Contradiction Investors Cannot Ignore
Trump claims AI fears are manufactured. Yet it is unclear why the industry’s most prominent executive sought a private audience with the president. Trump has also claimed sweeping power over AI companies, a stance that sits oddly beside dismissing the risk as fiction.
Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance has voiced skepticism toward AI executives seeking government regulation. That skepticism complicates the administration’s message ahead of Trump’s meeting with China’s Xi Jinping next week.
Neither the White House nor OpenAI has detailed what was discussed backstage. That leaves the gap between Trump’s public dismissal and his private engagement unresolved for now.
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