Lutnick's G20 summit flex: Parade of tech moguls in N.C. today
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Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick arrives at the G20 innovation summit in Chapel Hill, N.C., on Tuesday. Photo: Jonathan Drake/Reuters
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who'll preside over a parade of tech tycoons at today's G20 innovation summit, tells me he's confident the U.S. will stay ahead of China in the AI race by continuing to define the frontier.
- "It's teacher-student," Lutnick said Tuesday in a sunny conference room between meetings with Chinese and Turkish officials.
- China's open-weight models, he said, "study off of the large language models of America. ... The teacher is the smartest person in the world, and relentlessly pushing to the frontier. The student ... can't be in the lead, because they're learning from the teacher."
Why it matters: Lutnick, a late-night confidant of President Trump, will use today's G20 Innovation Ministerial to project American brio on the world stage, at a time when China sees openings to best the U.S. and Silicon Valley faces an escalating populist revolt.
When I asked Lutnick if he sees the administration taking a heavier hand in regulating AI releases, imports and exports, he replied instantly: "No, the opposite."
- He sees the temporary June controls on Anthropic's most powerful models as a one-off, with the takeaway that models should be allowed to compete if they're guardrailed "reasonably."
- "I think it's going, actually, well," he said of the administration's current approach.
Nevertheless, the White House showed it's willing to intervene aggressively. So when Lutnick asked some of the world's most powerful tech moguls to appear with him for fireside chats, he got a hearty response.
- "I've infused the day with the great American technologists of our time," he said. "It's an incredibly important part of my portfolio [to ensure] the American technology stack is successful around the world. So this is a great platform to ... answer their questions for the world about how they can participate ... Where's the puck going? Where's the frontier?"
What we're watching: Lutnick will open with a breakfast conversation with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, then interview Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (lunch) and Palantir CEO Alex Karp.
- "I tried to bring deeply interesting people, but only in person," Lutnick told us. "Everybody offers to come on video. But come on! If you're not gonna get on the plane and come and join where the top 20 countries of the world are, that's OK."
