Trump signs voluntary AI accord, rejects curbs on US development
US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he and a large group of artificial intelligence company leaders had signed a voluntary accord at the White House that would include internal and external reviews of the technology. Speaking after a lunch meeting with top executives, Trump said there was broad agreement on self-regulation by AI developers.
The announcement came on a day when Trump also said the US government would not limit the development of artificial intelligence or back calls for "guardrails" and other restrictions. He framed the race to develop AI as a global contest between the United States and China, while several industry leaders have recently raised concerns about the pace of development and the risks linked to AI systems going rogue.
"I think I'm seeing tremendous self-policing. And they understand that they have to self-police," Trump told reporters outside the West Wing. Later, he said there had been widespread agreement on "self-regulation" by AI developers, adding, "and we automatically have regulation with the Department of Justice, the FBI, all of that."
The meeting brought together executives from major technology companies that are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure, including data centres being built in communities across the country. Those projects have faced grassroots, bipartisan opposition. Many of the executives in Washington have also called for a slowdown in AI development after several high-profile incidents in which AI agents have gone rogue.
Earlier in the day, however, Trump said the federal government would not hold back AI. "I will never stifle the growth of a technology that will be bigger than the industrial revolution," he said at the unveiling of America.gov, an AI chatbot meant to help Americans navigate government services. "We can't stifle it, and we're leading by a lot."
Among those at the White House were Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, whose X platform has its own AI model, Grok. According to a seating chart posted by Trump on Truth Social, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sat to Trumpβs right at the lunch, while Musk sat to his left. Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also attended. Vice President JD Vance, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson were present as well.
Trumpβs strong support for AI differed from warnings made recently by some industry leaders. Amodei earlier this month called for leading firms to slow down development. Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also said safety measures should be allowed to catch up as companies reported more cases of AI agents going rogue. Other executives, especially Huang and Zuckerberg, have played down fears of runaway AI and said each company is responsible for making its products safe.
The AI chatbot launch took place during a daylong Washington event in which several Trump administration officials spoke of a "Golden Age" driven by what Trump insists on calling "super intelligence" rather than artificial intelligence. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said America.gov could soon be used to apply for a first-time passport fully online, without the in-person visit to a processing centre that is currently required.
Trump also said the executives had agreed to address opposition to new data centres by offering more financial support to local schools or by taking steps to reduce energy costs. "You're going to see, data centres are going to be very popular," he said. He added that if opposition continued, "they'll be forced to go overseas or other locations."
On Tuesday, Altman said in a television interview that OpenAI was placing increasing emphasis on safety. A day earlier, the company halted the rollout of a new model over safety concerns. "We are pacing our progress, which includes sometimes not training a model," he said 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 said the contest over AI was largely between the US and China, with America ahead. He said there would be a winner and a loser, with no "second place". Although the two countries agreed last week to set up a channel for handling AI-related incidents during Chinese President Xi Jinpingβs visit to Washington, Trump said he did not want too much cooperation with China: "I didn't want to do anything, because we're leading. Why would I want to do anything?" In sum, the day combined Trumpβs push for rapid AI growth with a voluntary industry accord, safety concerns raised by some executives and efforts to calm opposition to expanding AI infrastructure.
