Trump’s 'Monster Bash' brings AI titans to White House to police each other

Halloween may still be a month away, but US President Donald Trump kicked off an early Monster Bash at the White House. The gathering was attended by the world's top tech executives, including Sundar Pichai from Google, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang from Nvidia, Satya Nadella from Microsoft, Sanjay Mehrotra from Micron, Shyam Sankar from Palo Alto Networks, Nikesh Arora, Dario Amodei, and executives from AMD, Broadcom, and other major tech companies.

The occasion was also attended by Vice President JD Vance, Speaker Mike Johnson, and other senior administration officials.

Trump jokingly described Pichai as "a monster" during a luncheon, to which Pichai responded with good humor. The event brought together a remarkable concentration of tech and financial power, representing the individuals who create chips, build models, operate clouds, and increasingly control and determine the capabilities of artificial intelligence.

Trump and several leading tech executives signed a new White House Accord on "Super Intelligence," a voluntary framework for companies developing advanced AI systems. The accord sets four layers of safety controls and audits to ensure that the AI systems do not pose cybersecurity, biosecurity, or chemical threats. The companies also agreed to meet regularly to develop common standards, although the accord is voluntary and lacks penalties, reporting deadlines, or public reporting requirements.

Trump called it "almost like a constitution" and stressed the moral obligation for the companies to police themselves.

The gathering was well-received by the tech executives, who praised Trump as a "true leader" and lauded the White House Accord for promoting safe AI development. However, critics raised concerns about the potential risks of concentrating power among a handful of billionaire monopolists and questioned whether the politicians present were truly looking out for the public interest.