Trump backs AI industry pledge to police itself

On September 30, US President Donald Trump met with top artificial intelligence leaders at the White House to discuss self-regulation of the rapidly advancing technology. The executives, including Nvidia's Jensen Huang, OpenAI's Greg Brockman, and Anthropic's Dario Amodei, signed a "morally binding" commitment to implement sufficient safeguards on AI.

Trump stated that the companies would police themselves through this agreement, which was not legally enforceable. However, the White House Accord, the final document, left the possibility open for future legalization of these steps. Trump renamed the technology "super intelligence" rather than artificial intelligence, claiming it was more accurate.

Meta's Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that the accord would assure customers the AI technology worked as intended, with robust internal controls and multiple layers of auditing. Elon Musk said the executives essentially agreed to "grading each other's homework," which was better than grading homework independently. The lunch meeting included Jeff Bezos, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai, and two women: Trump's chief of staff Susie Wiles and AMD CEO Lisa Su.

The gathering came as AI attitudes in Washington turned sour, with lawmakers pressured by voters to curb or slow AI development due to fears of job displacement and societal upheaval. Recent incidents involving OpenAI's autonomous systems, such as a July breach of Hugging Face platform, raised concerns about safety. Trump, advised by Huang and former AI czar David Sacks, encouraged unfettered AI development to outpace China and stimulate the US economy dependent on AI-driven growth.

Major AI companies have publicly warned about uncontrolled development of powerful systems, even as they deploy this technology. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei stated that the mechanism for addressing risks was still under discussion.