Tech leaders, Trump sign new 'self

Tech leaders, Trump sign new 'self-policing' AI accord

The agreement calls for AI companies to have 'robust internal processes' and external audits, but aligns with Trump's position that the industry should regulate itself.

After describing the dangers of unregulated artificial intelligence as a "hoax" in recent weeks, President Donald Trump gathered tech executives at the White House on Sept. 29 to sign a "morally binding" accord on developing the technology safely.

The agreement, signed by Trump and six executives of the country's largest AI firms, calls on companies to have "robust internal processes and controls to ensure that their technology behaves as intended."

It also asks companies to partner with an independent external auditor to carry out assessments and "designate an independent committee of the board of directors to oversee to receive reports, oversee and receive reports from the terms operating the controls."

The executive signatories are: Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Greg Brockman of OpenAI, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The text of the document was released by Trump on Truth Social.

After hosting a lunch with the tech titans, Trump said the tech companies should regulate themselves.

"There's a belief that there should be tremendous self-regulation and we automatically have regulation with the Department of Justice, the FBI, all of that," he said. "But the self-regulation's very important."

Trump has in the past rejected calls from industry leaders and researchers to proceed with caution on the development of artificial intelligence.

Later in the afternoon, Trump brought the tech executives outside the West Wing to speak to the media about the accord and asked Zuckerberg to explain the framework.

"The basic idea is that we want to give the American people and our customers confidence that the technology works in the way that we intend," said Zuckerberg, adding that currently, every company was building something with different sets of standards.

"So we drafted a set of principles and commitments around building robust internal controls and detecting if there are any issues with the technology coupled with multiple layers of auditing and controls, starting with internal risk review, external auditors and evaluators, and agreeing that we're going to have all of our boards of directors independently review the reports that come from the auditors," he said.

Trump described the document as "morally binding" with a "tremendous self-policing aspect.”

"They love our country, they love the world and they came together," said Trump. "It's almost like a constitution in a way. The biggest people in the world signed that and I signed it as president."

Another Trump renaming effort: AI becomes 'super intelligence'

Earlier in the day, Trump announced that he was planning to officially rebrand “artificial intelligence” as "super intelligence" in all government documents with an executive order to be signed later in the day.

Trump, who had teased the new term at the United Nations General Assembly last week, was speaking at the launch of America.gov, a new website being touted as an AI-powered one-stop-shop to access federal services and information.

“This kind of innovation in government is just a preview of what is possible with super intelligence, or SI, and that's the official name in the United States,” he said as he unveiled the new website at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, DC. “I'll be signing a very powerful executive order.”

“Because when you say artificial intelligence, it's artificial,” he said. “This is extreme intelligence. It's superior intelligence. It's supreme also intelligence. But the word super is the best word of all and it's the simplest.”

Musk seemed to have quickly gotten on board with the AI rebrand, correctly himself midstance as he talked about the coming benefits of the technology.

"It's worth highlighting the positive benefits of AI – SI, pardon me," Musk said. "Super intelligence. I think by far the most likely outcome is an age of abundance, where we don't have just a universal basic income, we have universal high income."

Asked by a reporter how close he was to picking an AI czar, which he had earlier said he planned to, Trump said he'd be naming someone in the "next three or four days."

AI leaders call for more guardrails; Trump dismisses 'hoax'

Even rival CEOs of Anthropic and OpenAI recently warned that cutting-edge AI models could be dangerous and need to be independently regulated and tested before being released.

“Like many technologies before it, AI brings risks, and because it is such a powerful technology, these risks are serious,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote earlier this month. “They include the risk of losing control of AI systems, misuse of AI for cyberattacks and bioterrorism, and serious economic disruption.”

Open AI CEO Sam Altman published an op-ed calling for governments, not AI labs, to set the rules for artificial intelligence. OpenAI said in July that an autonomous AI agent went rogue during a security test and hacked into another company.

Trump has described the concerns as a hoax and called himself a “hoax buster.”

“I am the Hoax Buster, and I’m right now breaking another Hoax — That AI is going to take over, consume, and destroy the World, and that Robots will be marching into our Cities, and getting rid of us all!,” he wrote in a social media post on Sept. 14.

“Don’t kill the Golden Goose!” he warned in another post.

On Sept. 29, he once again expressed his enthusiasm and optimism for the technology as he touted the America.gov website.

“This is one more example of why I will never stifle the growth of technology that will be bigger than the industrial revolution," said Trump. "This is why the SI super intelligence is, they're saying, bigger than the industrial revolution, far bigger than the internet, not even close. And we see it and we can't stifle it."