Trump champions data centers and AI self-regulation at White House tech luncheon

President Donald Trump talked up the benefits of data centers and pushed for artificial intelligence self-regulation following a luncheon with major tech leaders at the White House on Tuesday, as calls for a slowdown reach a fever pitch.

"There's a belief that there should be tremendous self-regulation, and we automatically have regulation with the Department of Justice, the FBI, all of that," Trump told reporters following the event. "But the self-regulation is very important."

Trump called data centers a "very positive thing" despite mounting backlash over the sprawling multibillion-dollar facilities ahead of the midterm elections.

Tech leaders "want to see communities that are safe and happy, and they're going to make communities very, very happy," he said. "Otherwise, they'll be forced to go overseas or other locations."

Outside the White House, Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su said there was "a lot of optimism and a sense of responsibility" among the tech leaders in the room. She said leaders also discussed some specifics for a framework and industry accountability.

"I mean, at the end of the day, it's our responsibility to show the power of the technology as well as ensure that it's very safe," she said.

Concerns over the rapid pace of AI development have intensified in Washington and Silicon Valley as cases of agent-orchestrated attacks mount and major researchers warn of serious consequences for humanity.

Frontier lab leaders Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman have joined the calls for a slowdown, facing off against leading tech peers and the president.

This week, OpenAI postponed the release of its latest GPT-6.1 Astra model over safety concerns. Just last week, the company said it was conducting an "extensive" review of model behavior.

The AI lab has disclosed several incidents of unauthorized model behavior since the infamous Hugging Face attack sparked concerns over rogue AI earlier this summer.

A seating chart posted to Trump's Truth Social account showed the president seated next to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, followed by Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Google 's Sundar Pichai.

The chart showed Vice President JD Vance opposite the president, between Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Johnson.

Other attendees included Microsoft 's Satya Nadella, Anthropic 's Dario Amodei and Tom Brown, OpenAI 's president Greg Brockman and senior administration officials such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

OpenAI is simultaneously hosting its annual DevDay developer conference in San Francisco. John Ternus, Apple 's new CEO, did not appear on the list.

"The main issue that you have and I have is we have to take responsibility for the dangers we're aware of," Palantir CEO Alex Karp told CNBC outside the White House on Tuesday ahead of the event. "All of us do. And by the way, American people don't want separate rules for tech people and for themselves."

The luncheon coincided with an all-day event hosted by the president and vice president, where the administration unveiled a new AI-powered chatbot for government websites.

Ahead of Tuesday's White House lunch, Anthropic's Amodei attended a private dinner Sunday with the president, following his striking absence from a state dinner for the Chinese president. Sunday's dinner was the first one-on-one gathering between the two leaders, according to a person familiar with the visit.

"These are the most brilliant people in the world, and the job they've done is unbelievable," Trump said on Tuesday. "We have a very big lead, and we're going to keep our lead, and it's a very positive thing."