Trump abruptly cancels EO signing event after top AI firm CEOs declined to go

Key points

• President Donald Trump abruptly canceled an event on Thursday just hours before he was scheduled to sign an executive order granting the government the power to test frontier AI models before their public release.
• As The New York Times explained, Trump had been hoping that top executives from leading AI firms would attend the signing.
• He decided to pull the plug after learning that some CEOs couldn’t make the event.
• That made Trump unhappy, even though he’d only given them 24 hours’ notice.
• Other AI executives who quickly rearranged their schedules to go “were midair on their way to the Oval Office” when they found out that the trip was for nothing.