WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump hosted a high-powered list of tech CEOs for a dinner at the White House on Thursday night.
Watch the event in the video player above.
The guest list was set to include Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates,Apple CEO Tim Cook,Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and a dozen other executives from the biggest artificial intelligence and tech firms,according to the White House.
One notable absence from the guest list was Elon Musk, once a close ally of Trump, whom the Republican president tasked with running the government-slashing Department of Government Efficiency. Musk had a public breakup with Trump earlier this year.
The dinner was expected to be held in the Rose Garden, where Trump recently paved over the grassy lawn and set up tables, chairs and umbrellas that look strikingly similar to the outdoor setup at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
But as rain began falling at the White House Thursday afternoon, officials decided to move the event to the White House State Dining Room because of inclement weather, according to a White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The event followed a meeting Thursday afternoon of the White House’s new Artificial Intelligence Education task force, which first lady Melania Trump chaired and some of the tech leaders participated in.
“The robots are here. Our future is no longer science fiction,” she said as she opened the meeting.
Google CEO sundar Pichai, IBM chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna and Code.org President Cameron Wilson were among those participating in the task force.
The White House confirmed that the guest list for the dinner was also set to include Google founder Sergey Brin, microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and founder Greg Brockman, Oracle CEO safra Catz, Blue Origin CEO David Limp, Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, TIBCO Software chairman Vivek Ranadive, Palantir executive Shyam Sankar, Scale AI founder and CEO Alexandr Wang and Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman.Isaacman was an associate of Musk whom Trump nominated to lead NASA, only to revoke the nomination around the time of his breakup with Musk. Trump cited the revocation of the nomination as one of the reasons musk was upset with him and called Isaacman “totally a Democrat.”
The dinner was first reported Wednesday by The Hill.Trump’s outreach to top tech executives could deepen emerging divides within the Republican Party.
One of Trump’s closest allies in Congress, Sen. Josh Hawley, delivered a sharp criticism of the tech industry during a speech at a conservative conference in Washington on Thursday morning. He criticized the lack of regulation around artificial intelligence and singled out Meta and ChatGPT.
“the government should inspect all of these frontier AI systems so we can better understand what the tech titans plan to build and destroy,” the Missouri senator said.
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New Law Targets Deepfake Sexual exploitation, Expanding Protections Against Online Abuse
A new law, the “Take It Down Act,” signed by the president in May, aims to combat the growing threat of online sexual exploitation, specifically addressing both real and AI-generated imagery, including deepfakes. The legislation imposes penalties on individuals who create or distribute sexually explicit material without consent, regardless of whether the imagery depicts a real person or is artificially created.
the law responds to increasing concerns about the non-consensual creation and sharing of intimate images, a problem considerably exacerbated by advances in artificial intelligence. Deepfake technology allows for the creation of realistic,yet fabricated,videos and images,often used to depict individuals in sexually explicit situations without their knowledge or permission.
The “Take It Down Act” provides a legal pathway for victims to demand the removal of such content from online platforms and pursue legal action against perpetrators. Details regarding specific penalties and enforcement mechanisms are available through official government sources.https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/05/16/president-biden-signs-the-take-it-down-act/
This legislation builds upon existing laws addressing revenge porn and online harassment, broadening the scope to explicitly include AI-generated content. Advocates for the bill argue it is a crucial step in protecting individuals from a new form of digital abuse and holding perpetrators accountable.
Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti and Jocelyn Gecker in San Francisco contributed to this report.