Trump signs ‘morally binding’ AI document with tech giants

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he had signed, together with the heads of the biggest technology companies, a document he called “morally binding” on the development of artificial intelligence, immediately after a working lunch with industry leaders at the White House.

“It is almost like a Constitution in a way, and the greatest people in the world signed it, I signed it as president, and it is really a form of protection,” Trump said after the meeting, as Reuters reports.

Trump described the document as “morally binding” and added that his administration is considering setting up an oversight committee of around ten people, which would “oversee the whole enterprise”, as quoted by Reuters.

The signing came after the working lunch in the White House East Room with Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Elon Musk and other industry leaders, where Trump said technology companies should regulate themselves. He has repeatedly dismissed calls from industry leaders for caution in developing the technology.

The move comes just days after Trump, at the UN General Assembly last week, said he rejects “any attempt to build a globalist scheme to control” artificial intelligence — a statement he also repeated on Tuesday at the launch of the new government portal America.gov.