Donald Trump has dismissed calls for stricter AI regulation, in a show of dominance over tech executives such as Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, who he summoned to the White House following a spate of hacking incidents. Following a lunch with Big Tech billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and others, the US president shut down talk of new laws to govern the sector, instead endorsing “tremendous self-regulation”.

Parading his guests in front of reporters, the president — who has consistently opposed new AI laws despite popular support for such measures — said the 20 Silicon Valley executives in attendance had agreed to a “morally binding” accord to voluntarily manage the tech’s risks. Trump said the document was “almost like a constitution”, while House Speaker Mike Johnson, who was also at the lunch, said it committed companies to “robust internal controls and layers of internal and external review”.

Earlier this month, Amodei was joined by rival Musk and Open AI’s Sam Altman in calling for an industry-wide agreement to slow down the development of advanced AI models amid growing safety concerns. But Trump has sided with his former AI tsar, the Silicon Valley investor David Sacks, and Huang in defying calls for stricter regulation of the industry that underpins US economic growth, and that he has called a “golden goose”.

The president’s resistance to a regulatory regime has put him at odds with members of his Maga coalition, including Republican candidates in tight midterm election races.