Washington: President Donald Trump and leaders of major technology companies have signed a voluntary accord committing to a framework of internal and external controls and audits to govern the safety of frontier artificial intelligence (AI) models.
The document, titled ‘Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities’, was released following a high-level White House meeting with technology executives on Tuesday. The Trump administration has increasingly referred to advanced artificial intelligence as “super intelligence”.
The agreement was signed by Trump and the heads of major technology companies, including Google's Sundar Pichai, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI's Greg Brockman, xAI's Elon Musk and Nvidia's Jensen Huang.
The joint declaration said companies developing and deploying frontier models are responsible for developing their technology safely and in a way that builds trust with customers and the public. It said companies must implement robust processes to identify and resolve issues promptly.
The agreement sets out four layers of controls and audits.
The first requires companies to implement internal controls to monitor the capabilities and alignment of their models during training and deployment, including risks involving cybersecurity, biosecurity and chemical threats, as well as unintended access to technical systems.
The second requires an internal team to ensure the controls, monitoring and detection systems are working as intended and that identified issues are addressed.
The third calls for an independent external auditor or evaluator to assess whether the controls, monitoring and detection systems are operating as intended.
The fourth requires an independent committee of the company's board of directors to oversee the controls and receive reports from internal teams and external auditors or evaluators, while ensuring identified issues are addressed.
The companies also agreed to meet regularly to develop updated safety standards and best practices as AI capabilities advance.
While the accord is voluntary, the signatories acknowledged that the measures could eventually be incorporated into federal laws or regulations.
“Over time, it may make sense to codify these steps into laws or regulations,” the declaration said, adding that implementing the controls and audits was critical to ensuring a safe future.
Trump told reporters after the meeting that there had been widespread agreement on ‘self-policing’ among AI developers.
“I think I'm seeing tremendous self-policing. And they understand that they have to self-police,” Trump said.
The announcement came as major technology companies invest hundreds of billions of dollars in AI infrastructure, including data centres that have faced opposition in communities across the US.
Trump has opposed calls for restrictions on AI development. Earlier Tuesday, he said the US government would not limit the development of the technology or support calls for additional ‘guardrails’.
“I will never stifle the growth of a technology that will be bigger than the industrial revolution,” Trump said.
The White House meeting was attended by several technology executives, including Amodei, Brockman, Huang, Pichai, Zuckerberg and Microsoft's Satya Nadella. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Musk were also present.
Trump's position on AI development contrasts with concerns expressed by some technology executives, including Amodei, who has called for leading companies to slow development, while Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have also called for safety measures to keep pace with advances in AI.
Trump has portrayed the AI race as a global competition between the US and China, saying the US is currently ahead. The two countries agreed last week to establish a channel for handling AI-related incidents during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Washington.
At the White House meeting, Trump also said technology companies had agreed to provide more financial support to local schools or take steps to reduce energy costs in communities hosting data centres.
(With agency inputs from ANI & AP via PTI)
