Donald Trump hosted a dinner with six of the biggest names in artificial intelligence on Tuesday, and the president spent the evening arguing that American companies don’t need government regulation to keep AI safe — because they’re already beating China.
During the meal, Trump said he previously called AI safety fears a “hoax” cooked up by Democrats. He also said US companies are “dominating China” in the field, which means the government doesn’t need to enforce guardrails on the technology. He renamed AI as “Super Intelligence” while discussing the topic.
The executives signed a joint commitment called the Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities, described as “morally binding” with no stated consequences for violating it. Trump called the arrangement “the smartest people in the world watching over each other.”
The Dinner Guest List
The six executives who signed the commitment represent some of the largest AI companies in the world:
| Executive | Company |
|---|---|
| Sundar Pichai | |
| Dario Amodei | Anthropic |
| Mark Zuckerberg | Meta |
| Greg Brockman | OpenAI |
| Elon Musk | XAI |
| Jensen Huang | Nvidia |
Trump introduced Huang as a “very handsome guy” and called Pichai “a monster and nobody knows.” The meal lasted roughly 30 minutes, according to the source, and a video of the Q&A session exists.
What Each Leader Said
Zuckerberg praised the accord as “a historic conversation” and “a meaningful step forward.” Brockman said the accords would help “lift everyone up” and “benefit people in the world.”
Huang called AI development “the largest industrial revolution in history” and “creating a million jobs here in the United States.” Pichai said the moment is “historic and consequential” and noted GDP growth from the technology.
Musk said AI could lead to “universal high income” and “better medical care than anyone here, including me.” Amodei acknowledged “very real risks” but said the mechanisms for addressing them are “still under discussion.”
Trump’s Argument Against Regulation
Trump’s core argument was simple: American companies are winning the AI race, so the government doesn’t need to step in. He framed the dinner as proof that the private sector can police itself.
“The smartest people in the world watching over each other.”
That line suggests the executives are the ones keeping each other honest, not the government. Trump’s own framing was that these leaders are the best minds in the field, and they will look out for each other.
Why Self-Regulation Is a Problem
The problem with self-regulation is that it benefits the people who are doing the regulating. The six executives who signed the commitment are all leaders of major companies. Their moral commitments mean nothing to a small startup or to a consumer who gets hurt by an unsafe product.
The absence of consequences for violating the commitment is telling. If a company breaks the agreement, nothing happens. There is no fine, no penalty, no public record. The only enforcement is social pressure, and social pressure only works when the public cares.
Small businesses and consumers carry the risk. That is the danger of letting a few companies decide what is safe. The bigger companies get to set the rules, and the smaller ones have to play by them.
The Pattern of Trump’s Approach
Trump is treating a technical issue as a partisan fight. The renaming of AI as “Super Intelligence” is notable. It sounds like marketing, not policy. It is a way of reframing the debate so that the companies look like pioneers and the critics look like alarmists.
What Comes Next
The commitment is morally binding, which means it is binding in conscience but not in law. There is no mechanism for enforcement. If a company violates the agreement, the worst that can happen is a reputational hit.
That is a weak deterrent. Companies can break the rules and simply say they made a mistake. There is no independent arbiter, no penalties, no public accountability. The whole system depends on trust, and trust is easy to break.
The Bottom Line
The dinner was a performance, not a policy. Trump got six of the most powerful people in AI to sign a document that commits them to nothing. He got them to praise the arrangement as historic. He got them to agree that the government should not regulate the industry.
The paper’s position is straightforward. We side with small business and less concentrated power. Self-regulation by a few companies lets smaller firms and consumers carry the risk. The tech leaders are positioning themselves as the arbiters of AI safety rather than answering to federal regulation, and the paper sides with the side that lines up with maximizing individual freedom and supporting small business.
The commitment is a symbolic victory for Trump. It shows that the executives are willing to publicly commit to responsible behavior. But it is not a solution. It is a statement of intent without any teeth.
The paper’s view is that the arrangement is a step in the wrong direction. It concentrates power in the hands of a few companies and leaves everyone else unprotected. The executives are the smartest people in the world, but that does not mean they should be the only ones watching over each other.
The dinner was a photo op. The commitment was a press release. The actual work of making AI safe has not begun, and the people who are supposed to be doing it have just agreed to watch over each other.
Where the paper stands
The paper backs the narrow rules against direct harm, such as forcing companies to disclose safety failures they hid, and is against the broad rules that hand the market to the incumbents, including any licensing regime that only giants can afford. In this case, the dinner and its commitment show exactly what the paper warns against: a group of the biggest firms asking to be trusted instead of regulated, leaving smaller companies and consumers exposed to the same risks they hide.
The executives at the dinner are the smartest people in the world, but they are also the ones who stand to lose if the market opens up to challengers. A moral commitment that carries no penalty is not a safeguard; it is a promise that only the promisee can break. The paper supports narrow rules that catch real harm, not broad rules that let the biggest firms write the terms of engagement.
The reader should watch for the same pattern elsewhere: whenever a large firm asks to be trusted instead of governed, the paper asks whose interests that trust actually serves.
Source material: “Here’s what AI leaders are saying about Trump’s new safety plan,” The Verge.
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