On 29 September 2026, six of the world's biggest AI companies signed a voluntary safety agreement at the White House. There is no regulator attached to it, no deadline, and no penalty for breaking it. Two AI³ contributors looked at what that agreement actually commits anyone to do. One reads it against existing law, built to carry duties that bind nobody. The other traces what happens when a promise has no one checking it. Both pieces ask the same question in a different register: who is actually watching, and what happens if nobody is?
The Legal and Ethical Viability of AI Industry Self-Regulation
When PBS NewsHour asked whether self-regulation is enough to keep artificial intelligence safe, the cognitive scientist Gary Marcus answered without hesitation: “It's certainly not enough.” His scepticism points to a question that has moved from the margins of technology policy to its centre. Given the current US administration's pronounced preference for industry-led governance, can the self-regulation of major AI companies be considered a legally and ethically viable approach to responsible AI development?
Who Audits the Auditors? AI Self-Regulation
On 29 September 2026, President Donald Trump hosted the heads of the biggest AI companies at the White House to discuss the future of artificial intelligence. Six of them, Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta, xAI and Nvidia, signed a short, one-page agreement. The meeting came amid growing concern about AI models slipping out of human control, and it ended with the companies signing a voluntary agreement focused on AI safety reviews.