AI firms sign ‘morally binding’ self-policing pledge in White House meeting

Key AI industry leaders signed onto a pledge Tuesday to self-police development, President Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced following a meeting at the White House.

The agreement, called “The White House Accord on Superintelligence Joint Commitment on Frontier SI Responsibilities,” lays out a series of voluntary commitments for AI developers, Johnson explained.

Trump described the pledge as “almost like a constitution” and “morally binding,” adding that “there’s going to be a tremendous self-policing aspect.” He also said they are considering forming a committee that can “watch over the whole entity.”

In a rare White House North Lawn appearance, the president and House speaker were joined by numerous tech executives — including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and xAI CEO Elon Musk.

“The basic idea is that we want to give the American people and our customers confidence that the technology works in the way that we intend,” Zuckerberg said.

As part of the accord, the companies are committing to building “robust” internal controls and detection capabilities, the Meta CEO said. This is coupled with “multiple layers of auditing.”

He added that an independent committee of the board of directors will independently review reports that come from auditors.

“I think that these are good steps forward,” Zuckerberg continued. “The idea isn’t that this is the only thing that we will ever do. It is that this is a start and an accord that the whole industry could come to.”

The gathering comes at a tense moment for the AI industry, which is facing scrutiny after agents from several AI companies hacked into other firms in recent months. Researchers have also increasingly raised concerns about the technology’s potential risks to humanity.

Even as AI leaders like Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman push for the government to establish guardrails, Trump has continued to argue for a light-touch approach to regulation.

The pledge comes as Trump prepares to sign an executive order on Tuesday evening formally changing the name of artificial intelligence to “super intelligence” in government communications and documents.

“It’s not AI, it’s SI,” Trump told a reporter. “We’ve changed the name officially.”

Trump also fielded questions on AI data centers, accusing Democrats of creating a “false narrative” on the issue.

“I just have to do what’s right,” the president told reporters when asked if he was concerned that data centers could impact Republicans’ midterm chances.

“All I could tell you is that these big, powerful, very rich, very smart companies are going to be making massive contributions to communities,” he added.