Donald Trump To Make Mystery Announcement Today: What We Know - Newsweek
President Donald Trump is due to make a mystery announcement to the nation from the Oval Office at 2 p.m. ET on Monday.
According to the president’s schedule, the event will be open to the White House press pool.
On Sunday a reporter asked Trump what the “big announcement” would be about, with the president hinting it could relate to a meeting he is holding on Tuesday with Dario Amodei, co-founder of AI company Anthropic.
Trump said: “We’re meeting with Anthropic as you know on Tuesday that’s going to be big. And we have a couple of unrelated things tonight. And tonight I’m having dinner with the head of Anthropic so these are long days but I seem to be able to handle it… No, I’m having dinner with Dario, as you know very highly respected, from Anthropic.”
Newsweek contacted the White House press office for comment on Monday by email outside of regular office hours.
On September 12, Amodei published an essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier” in which he argued the pace of AI development should be reduced, and regulation tightened, in order to protect humanity.
Amodei wrote: “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”
He warned that if the current pace of AI development continues “it's my worry that in 6–12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet.”
Amodei’s call for a slowdown was endorsed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
However, Trump rejected calls for a slowdown telling the United Nations last week that “We're leading China on AI...and, frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins.”
In a Truth Social post on September 14, Trump described heightened AI safety fears as a “hoax,” adding that the only “guardrails” needed were a “strong and smart” president.
In February, Trump instructed federal agencies to start phasing out the use of Anthropic products stating that “The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War.”
The Department of Defense, which the Trump administration has unofficially renamed the Department of War, also cancelled a $200 million contract with Anthropic.
The row began after Anthropic said it would not remove safeguards on Claude, its family of large language models (LLMs), following what it said was a request from the Pentagon. Amodei said he would not allow Claude to be used for either “mass domestic surveillance" or "fully autonomous weapons.”
