President Donald Trump said Tuesday he is thinking about forming a committee of 'maybe 10 people' to oversee artificial intelligence.
He made the remarks after lunch with top tech executives, administration officials, and House Speaker Mike Johnson. Trump said there would be 'a tremendous self-policing aspect' with respect to AI and added: 'We’re also thinking about forming a committee of sorts where we put maybe 10 people on that committee. It could be from that group, so that we can, so the committee can watch over the whole enterprise.'
Trump has previously called for creating an 'AI Force.' He also said he is 'very close' to a decision on an AI czar and plans to announce the candidate in the next three to four days.
At the same meeting, Johnson said AI executives signed an 'accord' on AI standards. The released agreement describes a voluntary framework built around internal controls, outside audits, and board oversight.
According to the text of the accord, companies training and deploying frontier models should implement robust internal controls to monitor capabilities and alignment during training and deployment, including around cybersecurity, biosecurity, and chemical threats. The document also says companies should empower an internal team, partner with an independent external auditor or evaluator, and designate an independent committee of the board of directors to oversee reports and make sure problems are remediated.
The accord says those steps are meant to give companies, customers, and the public confidence that the technology is operating as intended. It also says participating companies will meet regularly to establish standards and best practices to improve the safety of their systems.
Among the people named in the agreement were Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg; SpaceX, Tesla and X boss Elon Musk; Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei; Google CEO Sundar Pichai; Nvidia chief Jensen Huang; and OpenAI President Greg Brockman.
Zuckerberg said the goal is to 'give the American people and our customers confidence that the technology works in the way that we intend.'
Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton said the tech leaders agreed that 'being a leader in America in AI is the most important thing for national security.'
Trump described the agreement as 'morally binding' and compared it to a constitution. Although he said it is not binding, he said it is 'a form of protection.'
The market has already voted on the bigger question: who gets to set the rules for a technology that can move capital, labor, and national security at once. A voluntary accord is lighter than a regulation, but it still signals that Washington and the largest players in the sector want a hand on the wheel.
Capital rewards clear rules. If this framework stays private and disciplined, free enterprise keeps more room to innovate. If it becomes a prelude to more regulation, the administrative state will have found another way deeper into the market.
