Sam Altman (샘 알트먼), chief executive of OpenAI, will attend a state dinner for U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. With debate intensifying over the pace of AI development and safety rules, top executives from major U.S. technology companies will gather in one place.

On Sept. 16, CNBC reported Altman is expected to attend the U.S.-China leaders' state dinner to be held in Washington on Sept. 24. Jensen Huang (젠슨 황), Nvidia's CEO, is also expected to attend, it said. The meeting comes as differences between the U.S. government and the technology industry over AI safety become clearer.

Dario Amodei (다리오 아모데이), CEO of Anthropic, recently argued that the pace of developing advanced AI models should be slowed and that safety cooperation between companies and external evaluations should be strengthened. Altman and Elon Musk (일론 머스크), CEO of Tesla, also expressed agreement on the need to manage development speed and secure safety. Trump, however, has shown a negative stance toward slowing AI development. Huang and Mark Zuckerberg (마크 저커버그), CEO of Meta, also stressed safety responsibility and voluntary responses by individual companies rather than uniform limits on development speed.

The possibility has been raised that AI will be a key agenda item at the U.S.-China summit. That is because China's open-weight AI models are improving in performance and narrowing the technology gap with major U.S. AI labs. Specific AI-related agenda items or whether there will be any agreements have not yet been confirmed.

A White House official explained that Trump invited several business leaders to the dinner to pursue deals favorable to the United States.

With Altman and Huang attending, the U.S.-China summit is also drawing attention as a chance to confirm both countries' positions on AI technology competition and safety regulation, beyond diplomatic and trade issues.