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U.S. President Donald Trump stated on Tuesday that he and a broad group of AI company leaders had signed a voluntary agreement—which will include internal and external reviews—during a meeting at the White House to address Americans' fears regarding the technology.
"I think I'm seeing enormous self-regulation. And they understand that they have to self-regulate," Trump told reporters during an impromptu press conference at the White House.
Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson met with top executives from the major tech companies that are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to expand AI infrastructure, including data centers in communities across the country that have sparked opposition from residents and politicians from both major parties. The group included CEOs who have called for slowing down technology development following several incidents in which AI agents went out of control.
The agreement, which Trump posted on his Truth Social social network on Tuesday, opens the door to future regulation but focuses on four voluntary measures that companies should adopt.
The agreement indicates that companies would implement "robust internal controls," partner with an "independent third-party auditor" to assess whether the controls are working, and create a committee within each company's board of directors to evaluate the reports of internal and external auditors.
"Over time, it may make sense to turn these steps into laws and regulations," the agreement notes.
Trump repeatedly praised business executives for developing technology that he said would produce "incredible growth." Investment in data centers and associated computer equipment has accelerated the economy and boosted the stock market, which has padded the investment accounts of higher-income Americans and increased their spending.
However, there were some notes of caution on Tuesday. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic and one of the most emphatic voices calling for a slowdown in AI development, warned that "the technology has very real risks."
"And, you know, the mechanism, how we address those risks, is still under discussion," he added.
The agreement was signed by Trump; by Amodei; by Google CEO Sundar Pichai; Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg; OpenAI President Greg Brockman; Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang; and by Elon Musk as founder of xAI, which is now part of SpaceX.
Trump suggested that about 10 people would be appointed to a committee to "oversee the entire company" and stated that the agreement would be "morally binding." He also indicated that he would appoint someone in the coming days to oversee the agreement after consulting with the industry.
Trump believes data centers are going to become "very popular"
Trump also said executives had agreed to appease bipartisan opposition to data centers being built in communities across the country by providing more financial support to local schools or taking steps to lower energy costs.
"You're going to see that data centers are going to be very popular," Trump asserted. If the opposition continues, "they will be forced to go overseas or other places," the president added.
Also on Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a television interview that the company is increasingly focused on safety. The day before, his company halted the deployment of a new model due to safety concerns.
"We are pacing our progress, which includes sometimes not training a model," Altman told CNBC. "We have to do this in a way where we can make arguments and safety claims with a lot of confidence, so people don't have a lot of anxiety."
For his part, Trump described the race to develop AI on Tuesday as a global competition primarily between the United States and China, and claimed the United States is in the lead. He added that there would be a winner and a loser, with "no second place."
During Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Washington last week, both countries agreed to establish a channel to manage AI-related incidents. But Trump stressed on Tuesday that he didn't want to cooperate too much with China: "I didn't want to do anything, because we're winning. Why would I want to do anything?"
[Publicidad]