Tech Week is in full swing across San Francisco, filling the city's restaurants this week with venture capitalists and AI founders who are enthusiastic about the White House's stance on regulating artificial intelligence — namely, don't do it.

And after months of debate over leading AI companies' unchecked AI agents meddling with everything from U.S. government websites to healthcare data, the nation now finds itself further from governing AI systems than it was a few years ago.

Late last month, President Donald Trump gathered technology leaders in Washington for a luncheon and a ceremonial signing of a voluntary safety pact, which he described as “almost a constitution” for “Super Intelligence,” the administration’s newly preferred term for AI.

The 308-word agreement stipulates that advanced AI labs should follow safety protocols and set up internal teams to monitor their own progress, but the administration has yet to provide details on how, in the words of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, to keep “bad things” from happening.

Safety challenges were not a priority inside a crowded event space in San Francisco on Wednesday, where founders and funders said the government’s hands-off approach would yield higher profits for companies building AI-powered defense and security systems.

At a meeting aimed at “investing in the forefront,” panelists praised the government’s bullish industry support — one of the blitz of popup events organized by Andreessen Horowitz, a venture firm whose head is a Trump science and tech adviser.

"I want to start with one figure that I think really emphasizes the investment opportunity of defense, and that's $1 trillion.

The U.S. government, for the first time, is allocating $1 trillion to its defense spending.

And $13.5 billion of that will go to autonomous systems and AI," said Kyle Stanford, a venture capital research director at PitchBook, a market intelligence platform.

"That has obviously brought a lot of capital into defense tech spending, more than we've ever seen."

A day later, three researchers at OpenAI’s headquarters said the ChatGPT maker had fired them, posting that “fear and unclear rules stymie AI safety work.”

Separately, David Robinson, a leader on OpenAI’s safety team until he recently resigned, said he was worried about letting the advanced labs police themselves.

“This is no substitute for hard law, and it does afford considerable latitude to the companies,” Robinson said.

“The interval between model generations is measured in weeks … and I think we are confronted with some very serious safety challenges in the nearer term.”

Trump has staked his political capital on the AI industry’s success, asserting that its unbridled development is crucial to winning the AI race against China.

On the first day of his second term, the Republican president repealed a Biden-era executive order that was aimed in part at protecting against the risks that AI systems pose to consumers, workers and national security.

His administration has since redirected federal policy away from oversight and toward rapid growth, notably by rescinding previous requirements for AI developers to share safety test results with the federal government.

In December, Trump signed an executive order aimed at blocking AI regulations at the state level, saying a patchwork of rules could stifle the industry.

Even as Silicon Valley companies have revealed their models' involvement in troubling cyberattacks throughout the year, the burgeoning tech sector has continued to drive economic growth.

Concerns about AI safety centred on existential risk, rather than current real-world harms, moved to the heart of debates last month, when a relatively unknown Anthropic engineer resigned and urged a pause on tech development to prevent "superhuman" systems from evading controls.

Subsequently, the CEOs of Anthropic and OpenAI echoed the call to slow AI development.

To some critics, their public manifestos seemed designed to curry favour with investors ahead of their public listings and the midterm elections, when the political tides could shift, with many voters opposed to data centers.

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump posted in response on Truth Social, warning voters not to “kill the Golden Goose,” a term he has used to refer to both AI and data centers.

As demands for stricter AI regulation grew, the administration invited tech executives to the White House for lunch, which was then followed by a ceremonial signing of the AI safety agreement.

“I’m witnessing an extraordinary degree of self-policing,” Trump remarked to reporters following the event.

The document bore the signatures of representatives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, SpaceXAI, and Nvidia.

A spokesperson said OpenAI is committed to embedding external assessors and finalizing contracts with third-party safety assessors, and referred AP to a company post stating that the researchers were fired for violating “clear policies on handling sensitive information.”

Google cited CEO Sundar Pichai’s post, in which he asserted that the company conducts appropriate testing and evaluations and is collaborating “to establish norms and build public confidence.”

Meta recently revised its standards for training, evaluating, and releasing its most capable AI models, and spokesman Andy Stone highlighted the company's efforts to refine its board of directors' governance structure.

Neither Nvidia nor SpaceXAI was forthcoming with responses to requests for comment.

Anthropic, which voluntarily disclosed on Friday that its agents had submitted a false tip to a Philadelphia police website about an unsolved homicide case, is bringing in independent evaluators and discussing collaborations with industry groups, a spokesperson said.

In a statement, the White House repeated Trump's comments about working with industry to balance innovation and security, and did not directly answer questions about how the administration plans to monitor the AI companies' implementation.

In the wake of the new Anthropic disclosure, it added that the Trump administration expected full transparency from the company, saying notification and remediation was “not optional.

It is a critical national security obligation.”

Under Democratic President Joe Biden, leading AI companies also made voluntary commitments to promote the “safe, secure, and transparent development” of their models, which included specific guidelines for tests and transparency reports.

The current accord lacks this, said Sarah Myers West, a former senior AI adviser to the Federal Trade Commission.

“Across the board, this self-regulatory approach has consistently done one thing, which is failed to work.

It’s failed to in any meaningful way ensure that these companies are honestly even keeping their house in order, let alone ensuring that they are compliant with existing law,” said Myers West, now co-executive director of the New York-based nonprofit AI Now.

“All that they’re getting is grace from this government.”

Following last month’s luncheon with Trump, the FTC announced that it had launched an investigation into OpenAI, Anthropic and other companies regarding the potential risks their technology might present to consumers.

The FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump recently appointed National Intelligence Director Jay Clayton and FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson to his new “Super Intelligence Force,” which the president said would keep the U.S. dominant in AI development.

He posted Thursday that the White House would consider anyone who does not refer to AI using his preferred term as “THE ENEMY!”

Members of Congress, along with civil liberties and consumer rights groups, have pushed for stricter AI regulations, arguing that oversight is insufficient.

Graham Steele, a former assistant secretary in the U.S. Treasury Department, said that even if AI companies set up internal evaluation teams or hire outside evaluators, such a structure can leave them vulnerable to undue pressure on their work.

“We live in a democratic society.

Are they the right ones to have the power to make decisions that have broad, structural, social, and political consequences?” Steele said.