Trump says AI giants have agreed to 'police themselves' - ABC News & Headlines – Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Donald Trump has repeatedly dismissed concerns about AI as a "hoax". (Reuters: Jonathan Ernst)
Donald Trump says the companies leading artificial intelligence have agreed to "police themselves" at a White House meeting of the industry's most powerful leaders.
But the US president is still resisting calls for government regulation of the sector, despite hosting some of the high-profile executives who have been making extraordinary pleas for guardrails on their own companies.
A who's who of tech executives attended the meeting, including OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, SpaceXAI's Elon Musk, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Google's Sundar Pichai and Nvidia's Jensen Huang.
They signed a voluntary "accord" that says "every company is responsible for developing its own technology safely" and outlines four broad "layers of controls and audits" that each should implement.
It says the companies will meet regularly to discuss standards. "Over time, it may make sense to codify these steps into laws or regulations," it says.
Donald Trump says AI industry leaders have agreed to self-police their products, following a string of high-profile incidents. (AP: Jacquelyn Martin)
Mr Trump described the accord as "morally binding", rather than legally enforceable, and said he was content with the industry's promise to keep the technology in check.
"I'm seeing tremendous self-policing, and they understand that they have to self-police," he told a joint press conference with the industry leaders.
His confidence comes despite a string of recent hacking incidents involving rogue AI, including in Australia, and dire warnings about risks of catastrophe from industry leaders and people who have worked for them.
"Remember this: we have the smartest people in the world watching over each other," Mr Trump said. "These are seriously high-IQ people."
Mr Zuckerberg said the accord represented "a start". "The idea isn't that this is the only thing that we will ever do," he said.
The meeting comes a day after OpenAI apologised and promised to "do better for Australia", following revelations an OpenAI agent gained unauthorised access to an online Medicare data portal.
Last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged the UN Security Council to work towards global safety standards to reduce the risk of AI-related catastrophe.
The Australian government is preparing to introduce legislation for national standards. But Mr Trump has for weeks been dismissing concerns about AI as a "hoax".
Earlier today, Mr Trump said he had discussed AI with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, during their summit last week. But he said he did not want to work with Mr Xi to govern AI because it would make it harder for American companies to get ahead.
"A lot of people say, let's do it together with China, but then they're going to be able to immediately gain access to things that we know that they don't know," Mr Trump said.
