Good morning. Andrew here. Here’s something to ponder. If President Trump and the top Chinese leader, Xi Jinping — who is expected to visit the White House this week — were to actually make a pact on A.I. safety and potentially even a slowdown in developing the technology, would we believe that the agreement was genuine? Sam Altman of OpenAI recently suggested that Trump and Xi could win the Nobel Peace Prize for reaching that kind of deal. But would we constantly worry that China was breaking the rules? And how would we verify such a thing? All this said, such an agreement is probably unlikely, given how Trump recently called concerns about A.I. safety a “hoax.” (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
The U.S. and China’s new A.I. dialogueThe world is still grappling with warnings about the dangers of artificial intelligence, including from those building the technology. (More on that below.) The topic was also at the center of talks between U.S. and Chinese officials over the weekend, before President Xi Jinping’s planned visit to Washington this week. China and the U.S. discussed creating a sort of A.I.-era “red telephone,” in which the countries could alert each other about national security issues related to the technology. The move came as experts, including Dario Amodei of Anthropic, said that any meaningful effort to make A.I. safer would require global cooperation.
Washington and Beijing remain at odds over many big A.I. issues. Amodei and several U.S. government officials favor strict controls on exports of chips to Beijing to slow down the growth of Chinese A.I. labs. China, for its part, has suggested that efforts to stunt its domestic A.I. industry are part of a “Cold War playbook,” even as some of its top officials warn that the technology could threaten the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. Expect A.I. to be a big focus of President Trump’s meeting with Xi. “The most important thing is just to start talking and so we have set up the A.I. dialogue,” Bessent told The Financial Times. “We will likely meet again in two months.” The safety talk doesn’t appear to have dented interest in Anthropic’s I.P.O. The Times reports that Amodei’s company may still seek more than $100 billion from the offering, perhaps at a $2 trillion valuation. That would make it the largest public debut in history. The company expects to hit over $100 billion in annualized revenue by year end, up nearly double from what it hit in July, The Times reports. Company executives and bankers have been meeting with potential investors before the offering, which could take place as soon as November.
Settlement talks lift Paramount’s stock price. Paramount executives are said to be weighing a $1.5 billion investment in production in California as the company negotiates with states suing over its planned takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited unnamed sources. Other concessions reportedly in discussion include divesting cable channels and measures to protect CNN’s editorial independence, The Times reports. President Trump and Mayor Zohran Mamdani are set to meet today at Gracie Mansion. It comes before the president’s scheduled speech tomorrow at the U.N. General Assembly, and would not be the first time the two have met. On the agenda: “issues affecting New York City and New Yorkers,” a spokeswoman for Mamdani told The Times. CNN, MS NOW and Politico say they will sue the Trump administration. The move came after Trump barred the organizations from the White House for coverage he described as negative and after reporters from the outlets were denied White House access. The companies argue that the ban is a violation of their First Amendment rights. New York’s business elite meet with an A.I. insiderThe former Anthropic researcher who sounded the alarm about the risks of artificial intelligence, Jacob Coxon, met virtually recently with dozens of New York City’s top business leaders at a gathering the Partnership for New York City hosted, four people with knowledge of the event told Lauren Hirsch. The meeting, which one attendee said was probably one of group’s most highly attended in recent memory, shows how pressing A.I. is for corporate America. What is the Partnership? It’s an advocacy group representing more than 300 companies, and its board members include Larry Fink of BlackRock, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Arvind Krishna of IBM and Lynn Martin of the NYSE Group. It’s rare for the partnership to host someone like Coxon. The group — whose chairs are Albert Bourla, the Pfizer C.E.O., and Rob Speyer, the Tishman Speyer — usually meets with executives or politicians who can offer insights on policies that directly affect New York businesses. But Coxon was invited to speak about broader topics to an estimated audience of more than 100 people. One attendee told DealBook that it was reminiscent of Bourla’s updates to the group during the coronavirus pandemic, another time of deep uncertainty that had potentially huge global consequences. Executives grilled Coxon in what was mostly a Q&A session. The topics included the cybersecurity risks A.I. poses; effective altruism, the movement that many safety-minded A.I. executives subscribe to; and what appropriate regulation would be, as well as whether a global framework was needed.
Attendees told DealBook that Coxon’s answers largely mirrored what he has said publicly. (A few also said they were struck by how young he looked. He is 27.) “The Partnership had a productive meeting, where our members were able to raise questions about the future of the A.I. industry,” a spokesman for the group told DealBook. “We look forward to engaging further on this important issue.” A spokesperson for Coxon did not respond to a request for comment. Higher for longer?Oil prices this morning are down for a fourth consecutive trading session. But there’s little relief in sight, as renewed fighting between the Iran-backed Houthi militia and Saudi Arabia threatens to further upend global shipping and fuel exports. The energy shock is aggravating a global affordability crisis that could prompt central banks worldwide to keep raising interest rates. That comes as President Trump faces pressure to join Saudi strikes against the Houthis, potentially opening another front in the war in Iran. The latest:
The fuel supply crunch could get worse. Costco has begun limiting the sale of a synthetic motor oil brand to one purchase per customer per week amid a global supply shortage, The Financial Times reports. Other U.S. retailers have sharply raised prices on motor oil, while others are scrambling to secure supplies. “There will be some spot outages that we just have to deal with,” Mauricio Quezada, the C.E.O. of the Jiffy Lube oil change and car repairs chain, told The FT.
Fed officials are watching. Inflation risks are now appearing “in all aspects of the economy,” including in the service sector, Neel Kashkari, the Minneapolis Fed president, told Fox News yesterday. The futures market this morning saw a 53 percent chance that the Fed would again raise interest rates at its meeting next month. What to watch for: Trump told Fox News over the weekend that he “probably” would be willing to meet Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s president, during the U.N. General Assembly gathering in New York this week.
Crypto blame gameThe crypto industry has been ascendant for much of President Trump’s second term. But the crypto lobby was dealt a major blow last week when the Clarity Act, potentially business-friendly legislation that had his backing, stalled in the Senate. The setback has already prompted finger-pointing, some of which is being directed at the crypto mogul Brian Armstrong, The Wall Street Journal reports. Armstrong, C.E.O. of the crypto exchange Coinbase, was deeply involved in the negotiations on Capitol Hill. As Armstrong fought for a version of the bill that better suited him, politicians grew weary, The Journal reported, citing unnamed sources: Senate aides in both parties were exasperated with the crypto lobby and especially with Armstrong and his team, who continued to wield their influence to extract concessions they viewed as good for Coinbase and the industry. Talks got so heated that, earlier this year, staff for Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R., Wyo.) — a key architect of the bill and one of crypto’s biggest allies in Congress — began refusing to meet with a member of Armstrong’s lobbying team, the people said. Despite the bill’s defeat, Armstrong doesn’t appear to be backing down. In a post on social media over the weekend, he took a swipe at The Journal before the article’s publication for “blaming Coinbase and me personally for the CLARITY Act not passing.” He also stood by his lobbying efforts: “I’m proud to have done it, and would do it again, because it helped create a better bill. One step of many along the way.”
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DealBook: An A.I. “red telephone”?
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