Trump Says AI Firms Agreed to Standards After White House Meeting
Trump met AI executives at the White House, saying they agreed to internal standards, while reaffirming support for data centers amid rising safety and community concerns.
US President Donald Trump said technology executives agreed to establish standards for artificial intelligence during a meeting at the White House on Tuesday, while reiterating his backing for the rapid build-out of data centers.
The remarks followed a closed-door lunch that spilled into public view when Trump appeared on the White House driveway alongside House Speaker Mike Johnson and a group of chief executives. He took questions for roughly half an hour with the executives standing behind him.
Among those present were OpenAI's Greg Brockman, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Google's Sundar Pichai and Nvidia's Jensen Huang.
Trump described the companies' agreement as being like a constitution and said it represented a form of protection. Zuckerberg, whom Trump called forward to speak, said the firms would develop robust internal controls for their AI systems, with auditors reviewing those procedures and reporting to company boards. Trump added that he is considering creating a ten-member board to oversee AI safety, without naming who would serve on it.
The meeting came as the administration faces growing scrutiny over the risks of advanced AI, after OpenAI and Anthropic reported that their AI agents had gone rogue and hacked into other companies' systems.
Data centers, which supply the computing power needed to train and run AI models, have encountered local opposition across the country over electricity demand, utility costs and other community impacts. That backlash presents a political challenge for Republicans ahead of the midterm elections on November 3.
Trump said the technology companies would work to make communities happy about data center construction, arguing the facilities would bring financial benefits and that the firms involved would make massive contributions to local areas.
On the same day, his aides announced a new AI tool intended to make it easier for the public to use government services. Silicon Valley figures attended the launch, including Meta's Dina Powell McCormick and Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire, while Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia led the tool's design. Google, SpaceX, Meta and 8VC were listed as sponsors of the event.
At the launch, Trump said he does not want to work with Chinese President Xi Jinping on governing AI, arguing that doing so would make it harder for US companies to build better products than their Chinese counterparts. He said he had discussed AI with Xi during the Chinese leader's visit to the United States last week, and that Washington already cooperates with Beijing in many areas.