AI leaders agree to self-regulation in meeting with Trump

The key leaders in AI in the United States signed an accord with President Trump on Tuesday to take responsibility for the safety of their own technology.

Donald Trump met for around half an hour in a closed door meeting with tech leaders including Sundar Pichai (Google), Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Greg Brockman (OpenAI), Elon Musk (SpaceXAI), and Jensen Huang (Nvidia).

Taking questions from the press after the meeting, Trump said that the document signed by the leaders would be “morally binding” and give a “form of protection” from the dangers of AI. “It is almost like a constitution, in a way,” Trump said. “And the biggest people in the world signed that, and I signed it as president.”

“In order to build a positive future for the American people and the world, we believe every company is responsible for developing its own technology safely and in a way that
builds trust with customers and the public” the agreement begins.

The companies have agreed to implement “robust internal controls” and internal teams to monitor its AI models and ensure they are working as intended. They have also committed to working with an external auditor for independent assessments, who will report to an oversight board. Neither they, nor President Trump, have revealed who will sit on that board.

“Together,” concludes the agreement, ”these steps will give each company, its customers, and the public confidence that the technology is operating as intended.” However, some technology experts are concerned that the agreement does not go far enough, and does not hold developers accountable for the actions of their AI models. The document seems to allow companies to “define what counts as safety” according to Kimberlee Weatherall from the University of Sydney, adding: “The accord should be ignored, for the distraction it is“.

On Tuesday President Trump also instructed government departments to use the term ‘Super Intelligence’, or ‘SI’, instead of artificial intelligence. The executive order would mean that government agencies will no longer acknowledge the use of the term ‘artificial intelligence’.

“As these capabilities continue to improve, they increasingly represent not merely artificial intelligence, but a new era of Super Intelligence,” the order said. Last week, Trump said that using the term ‘artificial’ made the technology “sound fake” and some tech leaders, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, have started to use the term.