The White House AI lunch ends with a voluntary safety accord and an executive order renaming AI “Super Intelligence”
The executives agreed four self-policing commitments that Trump calls “morally” binding. The only thing on the government's own record is an order telling agencies to write “SI” instead of “AI”.
Why it matters: This is the industry's first collective safety pledge made with the White House, and it is voluntary and unpublished by the government, while the one binding act of the day renames the technology. The same afternoon a mandatory safety-board bill was blocked in the Senate, so the split between pledges and law is now on the record.
The White House lunch previewed here yesterday produced two things on Tuesday 29 September: a voluntary pledge from the chief executives in the room, and a presidential executive order that is on the White House's own website.
The order, titled “Inaugurating The Era of Super Intelligence”, directs federal departments and agencies to use “Super Intelligence” and “SI” in place of “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” in official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, policy documents and other non-statutory documents. Within 60 days, the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology must propose legislative language for a federal definition. The White House fact sheet presents it as that renaming and does not mention the executives' pledge.
The pledge itself is visible only through the press. The Washington Examiner published what it calls the full text, headed “White House Accord on Super Intelligence Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities”. It sets four commitments: robust internal controls covering cyber, biological and chemical threats and models accessing systems in unintended ways; an empowered internal team; an independent external auditor or evaluator; and an independent board committee. It adds: “Over time, it may make sense to codify these steps into laws or regulations.”
ABC News names those present as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Dario Amodei, Sundar Pichai, Jensen Huang, Palantir's Alex Karp and Shyam Sankar, Jeff Bezos and OpenAI's Greg Brockman, and reports that the tech leaders signed on, without listing signatures one by one. Asked whether the agreement is binding, Trump said it is “morally” binding. Speaker Mike Johnson called it “a statement of principles” with “commitments that are voluntary on behalf of the industry.” No official copy of the accord was on whitehouse.gov at the time of this run.
- Confirmed The order directs agencies to use “Super Intelligence” and “SI” in place of “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” in non-statutory documents, and gives the President's science and technology assistant 60 days to propose legislative language for a definition. The White House
- Confirmed The White House fact sheet on the order does not mention the executives' accord. The White House
- Reported The accord's four commitments are internal controls, an internal team, an independent external auditor or evaluator and an independent board committee; “Over time, it may make sense to codify these steps into laws or regulations.” Washington Examiner
- Reported Trump said the agreement is “morally” binding; Johnson called its commitments voluntary. ABC News
Courts & policySafety, security & governance
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