Trump says tech execs signed ‘morally binding’ constitution
Por Gabby Miller, Katherine Long and Owen Dahlkamp — POLITICO – TOP Stories
Tech executives signed a “morally binding” constitution on artificial intelligence during a White House lunch Tuesday, President Donald Trump told reporters following the event. The president also floated forming a 10-person committee that would play a role in overseeing the industry.
“The biggest people in the world signed that and I signed it as president,” Trump said. “And it really is a form of protection.”
Trump said he was assured that companies are placing the appropriate guardrails on their models, despite a growing number of incidents where some of the most advanced AI systems escaped their testing environments and hacked into private companies and government databases. “I’m seeing tremendous self-policing,” Trump said.
It remains unclear what the constitution specifically outlines on AI governance, but it signals a willingness from the Trump administration to acknowledge growing public anxiety about AI. The move contrasts with major AI safety legislation stalled on the Hill.
“To have them all together and assembled to talk about this and build consensus today was a very important first step in what we are all trying to achieve together,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, who pitched the meeting earlier this month, told reporters outside the White House. “What we did today was important because these leading minds came together and had a discussion.”
Trump also plans to sign a directive this evening to formally rename artificial intelligence to “superintelligence,” his preferred term for the emerging technology. “It’s not artificial, we all agree on that,” Trump also told reporters. The signing is expected to take place at 5 p.m.
Just hours before the lunch, Trump reiterated his promise at an event launching the AI-powered America.gov to allow unfettered development of American artificial intelligence after weeks of rebuffing calls for government intervention.
The new website “is one more example of why I will never stifle the growth of technology that will be bigger than the industrial revolution,” Trump said during the event.
Former AI czar and venture capitalist David Sacks, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Greg Brockman, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and SpaceX’s Elon Musk were among the group of tech leaders at the White House lunch Tuesday, a White House official told POLITICO.
Amodei has been on a multi-stop tour through Washington this week, meeting with Senate Majority Leader John Thune Monday night where he provided feedback on a draft bill intended to mitigate the catastrophic risks of AI, following a private dinner with Trump on Sunday evening.
Other attendees include Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Palo Alto Network’s Nikesh Arora, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Altimeter’s Brad Gerstner, Palantir’s Alex Karp and Shyam Sankar, ServiceNow’s Bill McDermott, Micron Technology’s Sanjay Mehrotra, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Social Capital’s Chamath Palihapitiya, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Exiger’s Brandon Rahbar Daniels, AMD’s Lisa Su and Broadcom’s Hock Tan.
The assembled group has sharply diverged on how seriously to take the theoretical threats AI may pose.
Amodei and Musk have issued dire warnings that, if left unchecked, the tech could pose an existential risk to humanity. Huang and Zuckerberg, on the other hand, have sought in their public comments to emphasize the benefits of AI and downplay what they have described as doomer narratives.
But Trump, following the event, said the executives were largely in agreement during the discussions: “There was a lot of commonality in this room. It was pretty amazing,” he said.
Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories
