As calls for a slowdown in AI reach a fever pitch, President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he signed a “morally binding” document on AI with tech executives following a White House lunch.
President Mike Johnson called the agreement a “voluntary” statement of principles.
“It lays out the expectations,” he told reporters.
Flanked by major tech leaders, Trump touted the benefits of data centers and argued for self-regulation of artificial intelligence.
“There’s a belief that there should be tremendous self-regulation, and we automatically have regulation with the Department of Justice, the FBI, all that stuff,” Trump told reporters after the event. “But self-regulation is very important.”
Trump called data centers “a very positive thing” despite growing backlash over the sprawling, multibillion-dollar facilities in the run-up to the midterm elections. He also told reporters that he had officially changed AI to “super intelligence.”
Tech leaders “want to see safe and happy communities, and they’re going to make communities very, very happy,” he said. “Otherwise, they will be forced to go abroad or elsewhere.”
In front of the White House, Advanced microdevices CEO Lisa Su said she was “very encouraged” by Tuesday’s event and that there was “a lot of optimism and a sense of responsibility” in the room. The leaders also discussed some details regarding a framework and industry accountability, she said.
“I mean, at the end of the day, it’s our responsibility to show the power of the technology and ensure that it’s very safe,” Su told reporters.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei arrives near the White House before a scheduled meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, in Washington, DC, September 29, 2026.
Olivier Contreras | Afp | Getty Images
Concerns about the rapid pace of AI development have intensified in Washington and Silicon Valley as cases of agent-orchestrated attacks mount and leading researchers warn of serious consequences for humanity.
Frontier Lab executives Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman have joined calls for a slowdown, confronting their top tech counterparts and the president, who previously called AI safety fears a “hoax” and a “scam.”
Trump said the leaders wanted to “do what’s right” for the United States after Tuesday’s meeting.
This week, OpenAI postponed the release of its latest GPT-6.1 Astra model due to security concerns. Last week, the company announced that it was conducting an “in-depth” review of the models’ behavior.
The AI Lab has revealed several incidents of unauthorized model behavior since the infamous Hugging Face attack sparked concerns about malicious AI earlier this summer.
A lunch seating chart posted Tuesday to Trump’s Truth Social account showed the president seated next to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, followed by Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and GoogleThis is Sundar Pichai.
Opposite the President sat Vice President JD Vance, between Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Johnson.
OpenAI President Greg Brockman arrives near the White House ahead of a scheduled meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, in Washington, DC, September 29, 2026.
Olivier Contreras | Afp | Getty Images
Other participants included MicrosoftThis is Satya Nadella, AnthropicDario Amodei and Tom Brown, OpenAIChairman Greg Brockman and senior administration officials such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
OpenAI is simultaneously holding its annual DevDay developer conference in San Francisco. Jean Ternus, AppleThe new CEO of , was not on the list.
“The main problem you and I have is that we have to take responsibility for the dangers that we are aware of,” he added. Palantir CEO Alex Karp told CNBC on Tuesday outside the White House ahead of the event. “We all do it. And besides, the Americans don’t want separate rules for technicians and for themselves.”
The lunch coincided with a daylong event hosted by the president and vice president, during which the administration unveiled a new AI-powered chatbot for government websites.
Before Tuesday’s White House lunch, Anthropic’s Amodei attended a private dinner with the president on Sunday, following his conspicuous absence at a state dinner for the Chinese president. Sunday’s dinner was the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Trump has long argued that the United States must maintain its competitive advantage in AI.
“They are the most brilliant people in the world and the work they have done is incredible,” Trump said Tuesday. “We have a very big lead, and we’re going to maintain it, and that’s a very positive thing.”
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