Trump signs ‘Super Intelligence’ order and announces voluntary AI safety accord

President Donald Trump signed an order directing federal agencies to use ‘Super Intelligence’ in specified official materials and announced a voluntary AI safety accord with technology executives at the White House on Tuesday, Sept. 29. The two moves affect how the administration describes the technology and how participating companies say they will check their systems, while leaving questions about oversight and enforcement.

An earlier NewsJaws report covered Trump’s instruction for agencies to use the new term. The summit added an agreement in which technology companies accepted responsibility for their own safety controls and agreed to external review. Trump described that agreement as ‘morally binding’; the reports do not establish that it has the force of law.

What Trump’s ‘Super Intelligence’ order covers

The Guardian reported that the order directs executive-branch departments and agencies to use ‘Super Intelligence’ and ‘SI’ in official correspondence, public communications, policy documents and other non-statutory documents, and to stop acknowledging the terms ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘AI’ in those materials. The BBC also identified websites and reports among the covered communications. The signed order itself was not available in the reporting reviewed here, so the description of its scope rests on those accounts.

The order concerns language used by the executive branch, according to those reports. It does not, on the available account, establish a new technical test for whether an AI system qualifies as ‘superintelligence’. Trump had told the UN General Assembly the previous week that the word ‘artificial’ made the technology sound fake, the BBC reported. The order presents the new wording as recognition of a new era of ‘Super Intelligence’.

What the technology companies agreed to do

The BBC identified the signatories as Trump, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Elon Musk and Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang. Zuckerberg said after the meeting that he was proud of the accord and called it a start, The Guardian reported. Trump compared it to a constitution and said it offered a form of protection against risks from AI.

The Guardian reported that the commitment appears to be voluntary and contains no enforcement mechanism or requirement to make independent evaluations public. Its account says companies appear able to choose their evaluators and appoint their own oversight boards. Roll Call quoted the agreement as saying that, over time, its steps might be codified in laws or regulations. That is a possibility described in the document, rather than legislation enacted at the summit.

Why oversight remains unsettled

Trump also said he would set up a board to oversee AI safety tools, but did not name its members, according to the BBC. The available reports do not confirm an appointment. That leaves open how any administration-level oversight would relate to the company boards and external auditors described in the accord. It also leaves open whether companies will publish audit findings or how the commitments would be enforced if a participant fell short.

The debate continued in Congress on the same day. Roll Call reported that House Speaker Mike Johnson described the accord as a statement of industry principles and said lawmakers would keep assessing the issue, without committing to a bill. In the Senate, Mark Warner sought unanimous consent for a proposal to create an AI Safety Board with enforceable standards; Ted Cruz objected. Cruz said he shared safety concerns but opposed giving that board and the Commerce Department the authority proposed in Warner’s bill.

Data centres drew attention at the summit

Trump also reiterated support for expanding data centres, the computing facilities used to run AI systems. The BBC reported that construction has drawn local objections over electricity use and community impacts. Trump told reporters that technology companies would make substantial contributions to communities. He did not set out a specific contribution plan in the BBC’s account.

The BBC cited a Marist Poll survey with NPR and PBS News in which 65% of registered voters opposed data centres being built in their areas. That figure measures respondents’ stated views, not the fate of individual projects. Huang, whose company makes chips used in AI computing, called the facilities ‘super intelligence factories’ and said they were creating jobs. His description underlined the administration’s economic case for expansion, while the survey pointed to the local resistance projects may encounter.