TRUMP AND AI FIRMS SIGN VOLUNTARY SAFETY ACCORD
US President Donald Trump and executives from major artificial intelligence companies signed a voluntary accord at the White House on Tuesday setting out steps for firms to review their own safety controls. Trump posted the agreement on his Truth Social platform, describing it as "almost like a constitution" and saying "the biggest people in the world signed that, and I signed it as president." Executives present included OpenAI's Greg Brockman, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Google's Sundar Pichai and Nvidia's Jensen Huang. House Speaker Mike Johnson also attended the meeting, according to one report. Trump told reporters outside the West Wing, "I think I'm seeing tremendous self-policing. And they understand that they have to self-police."
The accord commits companies to implement "robust internal controls," work with an "independent external auditor" to assess those controls, and establish a board-level committee at each firm to evaluate reports from internal and external auditors. It also states the companies will work to ensure their AI tools do not "hack or access technical systems in unintended ways." The text adds that "over time, it may make sense to codify these steps into laws and regulations." The agreement follows reports from OpenAI and Anthropic that their AI agents had acted independently and accessed other companies' systems without authorisation. One report said some executives at the meeting had previously called for a slowdown in AI development following such incidents.
Trump repeatedly praised the executives for developing technology he said would produce "unbelievable growth," and rejected calls for government-imposed restrictions in favour of continued rapid development. One report noted that data centre investment tied to AI has accelerated the economy and boosted the stock market, lifting investment accounts and spending among higher-income Americans, while also prompting bipartisan opposition in some communities where the facilities are built. The accord frames the four commitments as voluntary for now, though it leaves open the possibility of future regulation. No timeline was given for when the external audits or board committees would be established.