Nvidia, OpenAI CEOs expected at Xi dinner, US official says

Nvidia chief Jensen Huang and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman are among technology leaders expected to attend a White House state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping next week, a US official said Friday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, SpaceX and Tesla chief Elon Musk, Apple head Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai are also expected to attend. The official called the dinner “a very popular and hot-ticketed event.”

The gathering comes as artificial intelligence is expected to be a major issue in talks between US President Donald Trump and Xi. The United States and China are the two dominant powers in the AI race, and Washington has tried to slow China’s progress through export controls on advanced chips used for cutting-edge AI, including top-end US semiconductors made by Nvidia.

Trump this week dismissed fears about AI as a hoax and urged US AI companies to keep advancing to stay ahead of China.

Huang told CBS News in an interview excerpt released Friday that “we should go as fast as we can, irrespective of anybody else.” He said companies should not ship products before they are ready or deliver unsafe products.

The debate over AI safeguards has also drawn warnings from industry figures. Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon said some people building the technology believe it “could kill us all by the end of the decade.” Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei later urged caution and a slowdown in development, while Altman, Musk and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis have also supported calls for safeguards.

AFP said Chinese policymakers have focused more on immediate risks, including deepfakes and child safety, while a Chinese spy agency chief warned this week that the technology could jeopardize national security.