The White House produced two documents on Tuesday, and they do different things. One is an executive order that changes what federal agencies call artificial intelligence. The other is a voluntary accord with technology companies that CBS News described as one page.
What the executive order says
The order, titled “Inaugurating the Era of Super Intelligence” and dated Sept. 29, sets this policy: “to the maximum extent permitted by law, the executive branch shall use the terms ‘Super Intelligence’ and ‘SI’ in place of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘AI’ and will not acknowledge the usage of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘AI’ in any applicable setting.”
Section 2 applies that to “official correspondence, public communications, websites, reports, policy documents, and other non-statutory documents within the executive branch.” It adds: “Nothing in this section requires the alteration of previously issued regulations, Presidential actions, contracts, grants, or other historical documents.”
Section 3(a) says “Super Intelligence” means the technologies and systems “encompassed by the term ‘artificial intelligence’ as defined in section 9401(3) of title 15, United States Code.” Section 4(c) states the order “is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity…”
Plainly Now’s reading: the order governs the vocabulary of executive-branch documents that are not statutes; the words “artificial intelligence” remain in existing statutes, and Section 3(b) asks for proposed legislative language.
What the accord says
The Washington Examiner published the text of the accord, titled “White House Accord on Super Intelligence Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities.” CBS News reported that President Donald Trump posted the one-page accord to Truth Social.
It lists “four layers of controls and audits” for each company “training and deploying frontier models”:
- Internal controls to monitor models “during training and deployment around areas like cybersecurity, biosecurity, and chemical threats” and to ensure models “do not hack or access technical systems in unintended ways.”
- An internal team to ensure the controls operate “as intended.”
- Review by “an independent external auditor or evaluator.”
- Oversight from “an independent committee of the board of directors.”
The text names no penalty and no government body to check compliance; by Plainly Now’s reading, the external auditor and board committee it describes are ones each company would arrange for itself. It says: “Over time, it may make sense to codify these steps into laws or regulations.” Its next line reads: “Regardless of whether this is required of companies, we believe that implementing these controls and audits is critical to ensuring a safe future for everyone, and each of our companies are committed to doing this.”
The Examiner, which published the text, names six signers: Sundar Pichai of Google, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Elon Musk, whom it calls “SpaceXAI CEO,” Jensen Huang of Nvidia, and OpenAI co-founder and President Greg Brockman. CNBC’s list of attendees also included Microsoft’s Satya Nadella; attendance alone is not counted here as signing.
Asked whether the deal was binding, Trump said, per CBS: “I think it’s morally binding.” CBS also quoted Trump saying, “It’s almost like a constitution, in a way.”
How it compares with 2023
On July 21, 2023, a White House fact sheet announced voluntary commitments from “seven leading AI companies”: Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI. Those companies committed “to internal and external security testing of their AI systems before their release” and to sharing information on managing AI risks.
Plainly Now’s reading of the two texts: the 2023 list covered pre-release testing, information sharing, protecting model weights and other steps; the 2026 accord’s four layers center on ongoing internal controls, an outside auditor and board oversight. Both are voluntary.
What happens next
The order gives the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology 60 days to send “proposed legislative language to establish a Federal definition” of the new terms, including “an assessment of whether, and to what extent” it should “modify, expand upon, or otherwise supersede” the statutory definition.
For the accord, the text says the companies “will meet regularly to establish standards and best practices.” CBS reported that Trump said the leaders also discussed forming a 10-person committee to “watch over the enterprise.”