President Donald Trump and leading artificial intelligence executives signed what he called a “morally binding” voluntary accord Tuesday that relies on internal reviews, outside audits and industry self-regulation rather than new federal restrictions as the administration races to preserve U.S. leadership in AI.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
President Donald Trump and some of the nation’s most powerful technology executives signed a voluntary artificial intelligence accord Tuesday aimed at establishing safety standards through industry self-policing rather than a new federal regulatory system.
The agreement emerged from a White House meeting that brought together leaders from companies driving hundreds of billions of dollars in AI development and infrastructure spending. Trump described the document as “morally binding,” while House Speaker Mike Johnson said executives had signed an “accord” covering AI standards. Details of the full document were not immediately released.
WATCH:
“I think I’m seeing tremendous self-policing. And they understand that they have to self-police,” Trump told reporters outside the West Wing.
According to accounts of the agreement, participating companies committed to measures that include internal risk reviews, independent outside audits and board-level oversight. Trump also said his administration was considering a separate committee of approximately 10 people to monitor the industry more broadly.
“It’s almost like a Constitution in a way, and the biggest people in the world signed that and I signed it as president and it really is a form of protection,” Trump said after the meeting.
“We’re also thinking about forming a committee of sorts where we put maybe 10 people on that committee … so the committee can watch over the whole enterprise,” he added.
The agreement reflects Trump’s effort to answer mounting concerns about rapidly advancing AI without imposing the kind of broad government restrictions he argues could slow American innovation.
Earlier Tuesday, Trump rejected calls for stronger regulatory “guardrails” as he unveiled America.gov, an AI-powered federal portal intended to help Americans navigate government services.
“I will never stifle the growth of a technology that will be bigger than the industrial revolution,” Trump said. “We can’t stifle it, and we’re leading by a lot.”
The administration has consistently argued that the United States must avoid burdensome AI regulation while maintaining safeguards against criminal misuse, cybersecurity threats and other risks. Trump signed an executive order in June directing federal agencies to advance AI innovation while strengthening security protections, and his administration has opposed what it describes as excessive restrictions that could weaken U.S. competitiveness.
Trump said existing federal law-enforcement authority would remain available even as companies police their own technology.
Speaking after the White House lunch, he said the executives had reached broad agreement on “self-regulation,” adding, “and we automatically have regulation with the Department of Justice, the FBI, all of that.”
The gathering included some of the most influential figures in the technology industry.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei attended, as did OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, whose companies include X and the artificial intelligence company xAI.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sat to Trump’s right during the White House lunch, according to a seating chart posted by the president. Musk sat to his left.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella were also among the executives attending.
Vice President JD Vance, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Johnson also participated.
The meeting brought together executives who have taken differing public positions on the risks posed by increasingly capable artificial intelligence.
Amodei and other AI industry figures have recently argued that development of the most advanced systems may need to slow enough for safety mechanisms and testing to catch up with the technology.
Current and former AI researchers have also raised concerns about increasingly autonomous systems, including agents that have displayed deceptive or unintended behavior during controlled testing. Researchers have warned that more capable self-improving systems could become increasingly difficult to supervise as companies race to improve their models.
Other industry leaders, including Huang and Zuckerberg, have emphasized the ability of companies to manage the risks internally and warned that excessive regulation could surrender U.S. technological leadership to foreign competitors.
OpenAI has likewise said safety testing can affect the pace at which it releases new technology.
The company halted the rollout of a new model this week over safety concerns.
“We are pacing our progress, which includes sometimes not training a model,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Tuesday on CNBC. “We have to do these in a way where we can make very confident safety cases and claims, so that people don’t have a bunch of anxiety.”
Trump’s approach places responsibility primarily on the companies developing the technology while leaving the government with traditional enforcement powers and possible oversight through the committee he is considering.
The president’s comments Tuesday suggest the administration does not currently view comprehensive new AI legislation as necessary to address the technology’s most serious risks.
That position comes as governments around the world struggle with the rapid pace of AI development and as some of the companies building the most advanced systems simultaneously warn that future versions could pose substantially greater dangers.
The White House meeting also addressed another increasingly contentious issue surrounding the AI boom: the massive data centers needed to provide computing power for advanced models.
Data centers are expanding rapidly across the United States, often requiring enormous amounts of electricity, new transmission infrastructure and, depending on their cooling systems, substantial water resources.
Projects have faced opposition from residents and officials across the political spectrum over electricity prices, noise, water use, land development and concerns that local communities may shoulder infrastructure costs while receiving limited permanent employment.
Trump said executives agreed Tuesday that companies must do more to win over communities hosting the projects.
He said technology companies could provide additional financial support to local schools and take steps to prevent data centers from driving up household electricity costs.
“You’re going to see, data centers are going to be very popular,” Trump said.
If communities continue resisting them, he warned, “they’ll be forced to go overseas or other locations.”
The administration has previously pressed major technology companies to ensure that their electricity demands do not raise residential utility costs. Under a separate ratepayer initiative, AI companies and hyperscale data-center operators pledged to pay for the power generation and infrastructure required by their facilities rather than shifting those costs onto households.
Community resistance has nevertheless intensified as the scale of proposed developments grows.
Residents in several states have challenged data centers over electricity and water demands, environmental effects and whether promised tax revenues outweigh the local costs.
Tuesday’s White House agreement attempts to address those concerns at the same time the administration is encouraging an unprecedented expansion of domestic AI infrastructure.
Trump also used the day to unveil America.gov, an AI-powered government portal designed to give the public a centralized way to interact with federal agencies and services.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said one future use could allow Americans applying for their first passports to complete the process fully online without the in-person visit currently required.
Administration officials described the broader initiative as part of what they called a coming “Golden Age” driven by advanced computing.
Trump has increasingly used the term “super intelligence” rather than artificial intelligence when speaking about the technology.
The president framed development primarily as a strategic competition with China.
He said the United States currently leads and argued that the race would ultimately produce a clear winner.
Trump also expressed little interest Tuesday in extensive cooperation with Beijing on AI governance, even after the two countries agreed during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent Washington visit to establish a channel for handling AI-related incidents.
“I didn’t want to do anything, because we’re leading. Why would I want to do anything?” Trump said.
His comments underscore the administration’s central argument: slowing U.S. development through restrictive regulation could give China an opportunity to close the technological gap.
The voluntary accord represents an attempt to reconcile that position with growing concerns inside the technology industry itself.
Rather than direct Washington to establish detailed rules governing model development, Trump is asking companies to conduct their own safety reviews, submit to outside evaluation and accept broader oversight while continuing to race ahead.
For now, the arrangement carries moral and political force rather than the weight of a new federal statute.
Trump’s description of the agreement as “morally binding” makes that distinction explicit.
Whether voluntary safeguards prove sufficient will depend heavily on how companies implement them, how transparent the reviews become and whether the administration ultimately creates the oversight committee Trump described.
The White House position, however, is already clear: the United States intends to keep accelerating AI development while asking the industry building the technology to take primary responsibility for policing itself.
Original article
Comments