House Speaker Mike Johnson seeks 'agreement of the mind' on AI as tech leaders meet at White House

House Speaker Mike Johnson said he hopes an imminent meeting at the White House with artificial intelligence leaders will lead to an agreement as AI companies and regulators enter a new phase on how to rein in the industry.

Ahead of a meeting on Tuesday hosted by the White House, Republican Rep. Johnson told CNBC's Squawk Box that there needs to be a balance between oversight and innovation.

"I think what's going to come out of the meeting today, I hope, is that we have an agreement of the mind, so to speak, around the table," Johnson said.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Palantir CEO Alex Karp, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang are set to attend the meeting in the East Room at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, according to reporting from CBS News.

This marks the latest meeting among AI executives and the White House. Last week, President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a dinner with tech titans including Huang, Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Amazon Chairman Jeff Bezos. Anthropic's Amodei was not at that dinner, but had a private one-on-one dinner on Sunday, according to The Wall Street Journal.

AI regulation has come into the spotlight over the past few months amid a series of hacks and concerns that models can get out of companies' control. In September, Jacob Coxon, a researcher who had worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic, resigned from Anthropic and publicly accused the companies of moving too quickly toward AI, saying that they were "racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives."

Since both AI CEOs Altman and Amodei have supported calls for stronger safeguards and a slower pace of development, arguing that governments and companies need to address potential risks as AI capabilities advance further.

Trump has taken a different approach and has pushed for the U.S. to lead in AI.

Meanwhile, lawmakers have begun introducing bills to rein in the AI industry amid safety concerns. On Tuesday, Democratic Sens. Mark Warner, Brian Schatz and Andy Kim took to the Senate floor to demand that their bill, the Artificial Intelligence Risk Management and Security Act, be passed. The bill would cement safety and security standards for advanced AI systems, according to a statement.

"The legislation is designed to address a range of risks associated with increasingly capable AI systems, including their potential to facilitate cyberattacks, evade the control of their developers or operators, assist in the development of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or other weapons, or have their model weights stolen or maliciously modified," the trio of lawmakers said.

Also on Tuesday, the Trump administration debuted America.gov, as a "unified digital front door" for people seeking government services. During a speech, Trump said it was not "simply a website," but rather a "reinvention."

"We're making it dramatically easier and faster, and more convenient to get what you need exactly when you need it," he added.

Trump also spoke broadly about AI, which he has since called "superintelligence," and the country's competition with China.

"Whoever wins superintelligence wins," he said. "You're going to have a winner and a loser and you're probably not going to have a second place."