President Donald Trump said he and a group of leading artificial intelligence executives signed a voluntary accord that commits their companies to internal and external reviews of their AI development, following a White House meeting aimed at addressing Americans' concerns about the rapidly advancing technology.
«I think I'm seeing tremendous self-policing. And they understand that they have to self-police,» Trump told reporters during an impromptu press conference outside the West Wing. The accord was signed by Trump, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk, founder of xAI, which is now part of SpaceX.
Trump posted the accord on his social media site, Truth Social, late Tuesday. It opened the door to future regulation but focused on four voluntary steps for the companies to take. The companies would implement «robust internal controls,» partner with an «independent external auditor» to assess whether those controls were working, and establish a committee within each company's board of directors to evaluate reports from internal and external auditors.
«Over time, it may make sense to codify these steps into laws and regulations,» the accord said. Trump suggested that about 10 people would be named to a committee to «watch over the whole enterprise» and said the accord would be «morally binding.» He also said he would name someone to oversee the agreement in coming days after consulting with industry.
The meeting included House Speaker Mike Johnson and executives from top tech firms that are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build out AI infrastructure, including data centers in communities across the country. Those projects have sparked grassroots, bipartisan opposition. Trump said the executives had agreed to address that opposition by providing more financial support to local schools or taking steps to reduce energy costs. «You're going to see, data centers are going to be very popular,» Trump said. If the opposition continued, he suggested, «they'll be forced to go overseas or other locations.»
Trump repeatedly praised the business executives for developing a technology he said would produce «unbelievable growth.» Investment in data centers and accompanying computer equipment has accelerated the economy and boosted the stock market, which has swelled investment accounts for higher-income Americans and lifted their spending.
Yet there were notes of caution. Amodei, who has been one of the most outspoken voices calling for a slowdown in AI development, said, «The technology has very real risks.» «And, you know, the mechanism, how we address those risks is still under discussion,» Amodei said.
Some of the actions outlined in the accord are measures these companies are already taking in some form or have previously committed to doing. The intention of the accord balances the latitude needed for innovation with regulation, said Shri Narayanan, a university professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Southern California. That innovation is not just limited to improving the capabilities of these AI models, Narayanan said, but also to efforts to improve model safety and security.
Other experts are skeptical of putting «so much faith in self-policing,» like Robin Jia, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Southern California. Jia said it is crucial to ensure the leading labs' intentions are «well-aligned with the broader interest of the American public.» He pointed to recent disclosures of hacking incidents and said: «As the models get better, the consequences of such things are only going to get greater.»
Some also took issue with the accord's vague, broad language. Alex Pascal, executive director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, said: «The only way to reduce the risks and harms of AI to Americans is through robust legal liability, regulation and fundamentally changing the race dynamics that are driving unsafe decision-making by frontier AI developers whose costs are borne by the American people.»
Earlier Tuesday, Trump promised that the U.S. government would not limit the development of artificial intelligence or support calls for «guardrails» or other restrictions. «I will never stifle the growth of a technology that will be bigger than the industrial revolution,» Trump said at the unveiling of an AI chatbot, America.gov, intended to help Americans navigate government services. «We can't stifle it, and we're leading by a lot.»
The unveiling occurred at a daylong event in Washington during which multiple Trump administration officials celebrated a «Golden Age» fueled by what Trump insists on calling «super intelligence,» rather than artificial intelligence. Secretary of State Marco Rubio highlighted that the chatbot at America.gov could soon be used to apply for a first-time passport fully online, without the in-person visit to a processing center currently required.
Also Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a television interview that the company is increasingly focused on safety. The day before, his company halted the rollout of a new model over safety concerns. «We are pacing our progress, which includes sometimes not training a» model, Altman said, according to the interview.