White House signs AI safety pledge and renames AI 'superintelligence'

Two TechCrunch stories published on October 3, 2026 — the first at 01:48, the second at 01:56 — describe the same sequence of events from earlier that week.

The first story reports that the White House brought nearly every major tech CEO into a single room to sign an AI safety pledge. Among those present were Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk, and Anthropic's Dario Amodei. President Donald Trump called the pledge "morally binding." Trump also signed an executive order that officially rebrands AI as "super intelligence." The same story notes that Meta and OpenAI are putting friendlier faces on their AI products.

The second story, published eight minutes later, repeats that account of the White House meeting and the executive order, and adds one more data point: only 2% of consumers are paying for AI products. It likewise repeats that Meta and OpenAI are giving their AI products friendlier faces.

The reports do not detail what the pledge commits its signatories to, which other companies took part beyond the names listed, or how the 2% figure was measured. As far as these two reports go, the timeline stops there: the pledge has been signed, the executive order has been issued, and the consumer payment figure has been published, with no further developments described.