WASHINGTON — With calls to slow down artificial intelligence development gaining traction across the U.S. industry, President Donald Trump gathered the sector's top executives and endorsed self-regulation rather than tough new rules.
After a lunch at the White House on the 29th with Silicon Valley heavyweights including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Trump said existing laws were sufficient to protect Americans from the potential risks of AI.
Speaking to reporters, Trump stressed that "there is a belief that there has to be self-regulation," adding that "regulation is happening automatically through the Justice Department, the FBI and others, but self-regulation is very important." The remarks were read as meaning that corporate self-policing, combined with existing enforcement by agencies such as the Justice Department, is enough without new rules.
According to Bloomberg, Trump and the attendees signed an accord under which the industry will implement strong internal controls and multiple layers of internal and external review. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, said the full text of the accord would be released later. Bloomberg also reported that Trump floated the idea of forming a committee of about 10 people to help oversee the entire effort.
Also attending were Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Palantir CEO Alex Karp, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and AMD CEO Lisa Su. From the administration, Vice President JD Vance, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and White House science and technology policy adviser Michael Kratsios took part. Before the event began, Trump posted a seating chart on Truth Social. Seated on either side of him were Huang, who has dismissed calls to slow AI development, and Musk, who has agreed with Amodei's push for a slower pace.
Bloomberg said Trump had "poured cold water" on expectations that, by convening the lunch, he would show greater openness to new AI rules. Trump instead insisted that "we are ahead by a very wide margin in AI, and we are going to keep that margin."
He also said that "in areas where data centers have developed significantly, people have become much wealthier. A lot of good things have happened," adding that "this group cherishes local communities. They will work with local communities, especially on data centers, and they will work to make those communities happy." The comments were read as signaling that Big Tech companies will roll out policies to contribute to individual regions, at a time when resentment is building in U.S. communities over surging electricity bills tied to data center construction.
Trump said he would sign an executive order at 5 p.m. changing the term artificial intelligence to superintelligence, adding that "artificial intelligence is not artificial. We all agree on that."
