Trump announces vague ‘morally binding’ AI deal among tech CEOs for ‘tremendous self-policing’ | Donald Trump

Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the heads of America’s largest technology and AI companies had signed a “morally binding” agreement aimed at controlling artificial intelligence. He announced the agreement, called Joint Commitment On Frontier Responsibilities, following a White House lunch with top tech executives.

“It’s almost like a constitution in a way, and the greatest people in the world signed it, and I signed it as president, and it’s really a form of protection,” Trump said.

Trump also signed an executive order renaming artificial intelligence “superintelligence,” similar to a statement he made at the United Nations last week.

“The Order directs all departments and agencies to use the terms ‘Super Intelligence’ and ‘SI’ in official correspondence, public communications, policy documents, and non-statutory documents within the Executive Branch and to no longer recognize the terms ‘Artificial Intelligence’ or ‘AI,'” the order states.

The agreement, which Trump said would allow companies to conduct “tremendous self-policing” of their products and technologies, outlines a vague framework for how AI companies would establish security standards when testing new products. The tech industry has come under increased public scrutiny following a series of incidents in which large AI companies inadvertently hacked outside organizations during security testing.

While lawmakers, AI researchers and even some AI companies have called for increased government oversight of artificial intelligence, Trump has largely rejected calls for more regulation of the technology — citing competition with China and threats to economic growth.

The joint pledge that Trump posted Tuesday on his Truth Social account appears to have no enforcement mechanisms or legal implications and is instead a voluntary commitment.

The document describes four “levels of controls and audits” for AI companies. The first is to implement internal safety monitoring during training – a measure that already exists in large laboratories and has failed to prevent test failures so far. The second calls for empowering an internal team to ensure the first level of oversight is functioning properly, while the third agrees to empower an external auditor to independently assess security controls. Finally, the agreement calls for companies to appoint an independent board to review reports on these security controls.

None of the checks listed in the agreement involve government regulators or include a commitment to publicly detail the findings of independent assessments. The agreement also appears to allow companies to choose their own evaluators, appoint their own monitoring boards and decide whether to publish their results.

Trump made the remarks after hosting a lunch with tech executives including Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX; Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta; Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia; Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic; and other senior industry executives. The tech industry, which has largely aligned itself with the Trump administration, has lobbied against strict regulatory oversight while arguing it would stifle the economy.

Zuckerberg, joined by Trump and other tech moguls, told a post-lunch news conference that he was proud of the deal and said it was created to assure the American public that their technology was trustworthy.

“This is a start and an agreement that the entire industry could reach,” Zuckerberg said. “It was sort of a historic conversation.”