[Image of artificial intelligence, Credit to Pixabay]

President Donald Trump and the chief executives of several of the largest artificial intelligence companies in the United States signed a voluntary self-regulation agreement at the White House on September 29, formalizing a framework for industry oversight even as several of the same executives have publicly advocated for binding government rules on the technology.

The agreement, titled "The White House Accord on Super Intelligence: Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities," was announced following a luncheon in the East Room attended by Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and a group of senior AI industry figures, and was later posted by the president on his Truth Social platform. 

Executives at the gathering included Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and xAI chief executive Elon Musk, whose social media platform operates the Grok AI model. 

The accord outlines four voluntary commitments for AI developers, including the maintenance of internal risk controls, the establishment of an internal team to oversee those controls, cooperation with independent outside auditors, and the creation of an independent board committee to review audit results. 

The agreement, which lacks legal enforceability, was characterized by Trump as “morally binding” during remarks to reporters outside the West Wing, emphasizing its ethical weight over the force of law. 

"I think I'm seeing tremendous self-policing," Trump told reporters, emphasizing that participating companies "understand that they have to self-police" and that existing federal law enforcement authorities would address any violations. 

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, a public advocate for industry self-regulation, said the agreement was intended to assure the public that the technology would work in a predictable manner. 

"The idea isn't that this is the only thing that we'll ever do," Zuckerberg told reporters, noting that the accord leaves open the possibility of codifying the commitments into formal regulation at a later stage. 

In parallel with the accord, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to replace the term "artificial intelligence" with "super intelligence," or SI, in official usage, telling one reporter that the technology's capabilities had moved beyond the original terminology. 

The voluntary nature of the agreement stands in contrast to recent public statements from several of the executives present, who have in recent months urged Congress to impose binding safety rules on the industry. 

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called in June for "more serious and binding regulation of AI," while Chris Lehane, chief global affairs officer at OpenAI, said in September that Congress should establish mandatory national AI safety standards. 

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have likewise argued that safety measures must catch up with the pace of development, pointing to a growing number of reported incidents in which AI agents have acted outside their intended parameters. 

In contrast, Donald Trump has dismissed those calls, dismissing concerns about the risks of unchecked AI development as a "hoax" and promising earlier on Tuesday that his administration would not impose "guardrails" or other restrictions on the industry. 

Industry observers have questioned whether a voluntary accord can meaningfully address the risks that executives themselves have been warning about, with Bradley Tusk, chief executive of Tusk Ventures, telling CNBC that many of the same leaders present at the White House had publicly supported binding regulation only two weeks prior. 

The new accord echoes a similar voluntary agreement signed in July 2023, when seven major AI firms, including Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI, committed to safety practices under the Biden administration, later followed by a more detailed executive order. 

The meeting also takes place amid growing public opposition to the construction of large AI data centers in communities across the United States, which Trump has defended by saying that AI companies "will be very generous" with the communities that host their facilities. 

The accord explicitly leaves open the possibility of future legally binding rules, stating that the voluntary commitments may be codified "into laws or regulations" if circumstances warrant, though it does not set a timeline for any such transition.