Here’s what AI leaders are saying about Trump’s new safety plan

Who needs legally binding regulations when you can be your own AI safety judge?

Who needs legally binding regulations when you can be your own AI safety judge?

by Jess Weatherbed

Sep 30, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

is a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.

After hosting a meal with Big Tech leaders on Tuesday, President Donald Trump responded to journalist questions about his artificial intelligence announcements in typical fashion. He said his previous claims regarding fears around AI safety being a “hoax” cooked up by Democrats no longer apply now that he’s renamed the technology to “Super Intelligence.” He brushed off concerns that the government wasn’t enforcing enough AI guardrails because US companies are “dominating China.”

And instead of ushering in federal AI regulations, Trump now has “the smartest people in the world watching over each other.”

The people in question here are Google’s Sundar Pichai, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI’s Greg Brockman, XAI’s Elon Musk, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. These tech leaders have signed the Joint Commitment On Frontier Responsibilities: a “morally binding” safety pledge that requires their companies to self-regulate their own AI technology with common sense guidelines and, seemingly, no ramifications for violating the agreement.

All six of the signees provided press commentary at Trump’s behest, praising the self-policing plans as a positive step towards advancing AI technology, creating jobs, and dispersing negative public opinion around AI safety. You can check out a 30-minute video of the Q&A here, or read the key statements from each exec below:

Mark Zuckerberg:

“I can kind of summarize what I think we all signed today, which is the White House accord on developing this technology safely. The basic idea is that we want to give the American people and our customers confidence that the technology works in the way we intend[...]”

“The idea isn’t that this is the only thing that we will ever do. It is that this is a start and an accord that the whole industry could come to and I was very proud to have that discussion with a number of our colleagues who I think are running great companies. It was sort of a historic conversation. I don’t think anything like this has come before and I think this is a meaningful step forward.”

Greg Brockman:

“We build artificial intelligence to benefit everyone. We think it can lift everyone up. We see a whole renaissance of small businesses, scientific discoveries really starting to happen, drug development, really being able to improve everyone’s lives. And we think that these accords and under President Trump’s leadership, everyone coming together to agree on how to move forward safely, I think that’s just so important because we’re doing this in order to benefit people in the world.”

Jensen Huang:

“This is the largest industrial revolution in history. And we’re going through the single largest infrastructure buildout in human history. It’s creating a million jobs here in the United States[...]”

“There’s no conflict between innovation, technology, and safety. But we are going to have to create new technologies to advance the capabilities of AI, but we’re also creating new technologies to advance the safety of AI. All of this technology is being developed by the industry today. You see behind me just an incredible number of leaders in our industry, moving together as one, and we’re going to advance this technology that is so consequential to humanity, so consequential to the future prosperity of our nation. And we’re going to do it responsibly and safely.”

Sundar Pichai:

Before I get into Pichai’s comments, I need to highlight this out of amusement: Trump introduced Huang by repeatedly describing him as a “very handsome guy.” But when inviting Pichai to speak, Trump told journalists that “you have no idea who the hell [the execs] are — this guy is a monster and nobody knows. What a great life.” Pichai did not seem amused by this despite awkwardly laughing it off.

“[We’re] really proud to be here today as an industry. I think this moment is historic and consequential, and I think there are extraordinary benefits to this technology. You can see it in the GDP growth we see. We have to make sure we are addressing the risks and the President has asked us as an industry to step up and we want to make sure we’re putting out products safely.”

Elon Musk:

“I think it is worth highlighting the positive benefits of AI — uh SI, pardon me — I think by far the most likely outcome is an age of abundance where we don’t have just universal basic income, we have universal high income. People speak about medical benefits, I think maybe it’s worth talking a bit more about that. When you have robots and you have super intelligence, it means that everyone in the world can have better medical care than anyone here, including me. And wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

[Journalist: “Not if they haven’t got a job.”]

“Well, jobs are going to change. Jobs have always changed. Being a computer used to be a job. There used to be buildings full of people doing calculations. And I don’t think anyone is pining to go back and do calculations all day. So I think we’ll see an evolution of roles.”

Dario Amodei:

“I will say what I’ve always said, which is that AI has incredible benefits. I’ve talked about the medical benefits to technology. As the President has said, you know, whoever wins AI wins. I think that’s very important. But I think the technology has very real risks and the mechanism how we address those risks is still under discussion. But we all need to work together to make sure that we can win, and we can win safely. If we do this right, we work with the President and everyone here, we can win safely.”

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