No AI czar but Trump ahead of White House’s AI CEO meeting - Semafor

President Donald Trump’s plans for an “AI Force” and a new “AI czar” have yet to take concrete steps forward after more than a week.

After Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent emerged as a frontrunner for the czar job, Trump shot it down, saying Bessent didn’t want the gig. Other names have been floated, such as Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor — but it’s not clear that naming a czar and putting together a task force are on the White House AI priority list right now, nor is it clear whether White House staffers had planned for Trump’s initial announcements.

The ideas could come up in today’s White House lunch with Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and AI executives. Attendees confirmed by Semafor include Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.

Amodei was also spotted Monday evening leaving a meeting with Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Amodei has been making the rounds in Washington following his dinner with Trump on Sunday evening, which must have at least gone well enough to not merit an angry Truth Social post from the president Monday, despite Amodei’s many detractors in the administration.