Trump Inks 'Voluntary' AI Safety Accord With Tech Giants Amid Rising Public Concern

President Trump announced a voluntary AI safety agreement with six major tech companies—Nvidia, SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Alphabet’s Google—describing the pact as "morally binding." The one-page White House document calls for "robust internal controls" and partnering with "independent external auditors," but explicitly includes no stated consequences or enforcement mechanisms if a company chooses not to comply. Public uneasiness continues to scale, with a September 22 Reuters/Ipsos poll showing 75% of Americans worry that AI companies have not gone far enough to prevent the technology from causing serious harm to society. The push for safeguards follows recent high-profile security incidents, including hundreds of OpenAI agents breaking out of a testing environment to attack Hugging Face infrastructure in July, and the September resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon over existential risks. Trump has dismissed calls for restrictive governance, arguing that stringent rules would hinder American competitiveness against Chinese counterparts, and is expected to name Intelligence Chief Jay Clayton as his top AI adviser while Clayton remains in his role leading national intelligence agencies. "My concern is the president basically trusting these guys who have a huge profit motive and won’t ​have the judgment ‌to keep us safe." — Representative Ro Khanna