Can ‘superintelligence’ and a non-binding security pact solve AI’s image problem?

President Donald Trump hosted Many of the biggest names in artificial intelligence. this week, in part to announce that the US government is no longer calling it artificial intelligence. now it is super intelligence.

In the last episode of TechCrunch Equity PodcastKirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane and I discussed the motivation behind the meeting and the effect it could have on the AI ​​industry. We were all pretty skeptical that the “Joint Commitment on Border Responsibilities” that the executives signed was going to mean much, especially since – as Sean pointed out – it is “deeply non-binding,” at least from a legal perspective. (Instead, Trump said he considers it “morally binding.”)

Kirsten suggested that the true meaning of the meeting might have been “a rebranding effort around AI.” (An effort that continued this weekend with Trump’s announcement of a new Super Intelligence Force.) For her, the big message was: “AI is going to kill us, it’s scary, it’s going to take away jobs, but not superintelligence.”

Continue reading to preview our conversationedited for length and clarity.

Antonio Ha: Officially, by order of the president of the United States, it is no longer artificial intelligence, it is superintelligence. we were talking about this last weekbecause this is something [Trump has] been hinting… he doesn’t make hints, he’s been saying [it] for a while. But now it is signed as an executive order. If you’re an official representative of the United States, you’re supposed to say superintelligence, not artificial intelligence.

And this was also part of this broader announcement about AI safety, which I think is interesting because of this pact that was announced, but also the fact that it actually happened. It seemed to have come together pretty quickly, because just two weeks ago, a week ago, President Trump was saying, “We don’t need any of this, we need to lead on AI, we can’t limit it in any way, we don’t need any regulation, anyone who says AI poses any danger is essentially a Chinese plant or a Democrat.” And yet all these AI CEOs met with him earlier this week and signed this pact.

Kirsten Korosec: Before that, we should say that not only was there a pushback on regulation, and we can talk about whether this executive order does any of that (I would say no, there’s a bit of theater there), but what’s important and interesting is that just a few days ago, Anthropic was really in the doghouse, so to speak, in terms of what was going on behind the scenes with President Trump.

All that changed when [Anthropic CEO] Dario Amodei was Invited to a dinner at 10 pm. He had this meeting, and a few days later, we had this lunch, and at this lunch, we have almost every tech power broker from every major tech company out there. So Mark Zuckerberg was there, Jeff Bezos was there, Elon Musk was there, Dario of course was there, everyone was there.

I wonder if any of you saw the press conference that took place afterwards, about which there have been many, many memes, due to the interesting and fun behavior when you bring together a group of tech CEOs.

But I guess my most important question for both of us is: What does it all mean? And does it mean anything?

Sean O’Kane: How much time do you have? First of all, of course, Trump and Dario had dinner. if you read Time magazine interview that Trump just made, your guess is as good as mine as to how informed he was that that dinner was going to happen, which is a strange reality to live in, but it’s the one we live in.

I’ll also say another thing that makes me skeptical (surprise, surprise) about how mended the relationship between the administration and Anthropic is, is that as much as there are clearly people trying to bring those two groups together, the Department of Defense is still very adamant that Anthropic is terrible and woke and a risk to national security. Apparently Emil Michael appears in Anthropic every other day in X. I think there is still some distance even though Dario appeared in this.

As for the agreement and all that, let’s be real, they spelled the united states wrong about the agreement that everyone signed. It is also profoundly non-binding. I mean, it’s completely voluntary. I think my favorite aspect was that Trump described it as a “morally binding” quote, which is simply a level of abstraction and terminology that I had never heard of before.

Antonio: In terms of Anthropic and its relationship with the Trump administration, there have been many reports, especially during that big blowup with the Department of Defense, that different parts of the White House had different relationships with Anthropic. The Treasury Secretary seemed to be a big fanwhile the Department of Defense is definitely not a big fan, or at least unhappy with some of the conditions Anthropic was trying to impose on the use of its technology.

In that sense, it seems like nothing has necessarily changed. There are people in the White House who want to use Anthropic’s technology, want them to be involved in these decisions, and others who really, really, really, really don’t.

In terms of the agreement, it doesn’t seem very significant. What is significant is simply the fact that they felt this was something worth doing. As indicated by the fact that they misspelled United States, it seemed like they rushed to put this all together. [But] The fact that this kind of gesture was necessary seems significant, although I don’t think the agreement itself will lead to major changes.

Kirsten: I think an important thing happened. And for me, this is the goal, which was a rebranding exercise around AI. “AI is going to kill us, it’s scary, it’s going to take away jobs, but superintelligence isn’t.” This is not my personal belief. For me, that was the message.