Dear Delaware,

Tuesday, the White House hosted a lunch for the people who build the most powerful artificial intelligence systems. Working people were not on the guest list. What came out of the room was a one-page promise the president called almost a constitution. It is not a law.

President Trump said leading technology executives signed a document he posted on Truth Social. The Washington Examiner reported the title as the “White House Accord on Superintelligence: A Joint Commitment on Frontier SI Responsibilities.” He called it “morally binding” and “almost like a constitution.” He also said the industry has to self-police, and that he will never “stifle” its growth.

Speaker Mike Johnson described the same paper as a voluntary joint commitment. A statement of principles. CBS, reading the copy posted to Truth Social, described internal evaluations, audits by an outside firm, reviews by each company’s board, and regular meetings on standards. The text, as CBS reported it, says laws or regulations may come later. The companies say they will do the controls anyway.

That is a pledge. It is not a statute. No fine is written into it. No independent federal enforcer is named in it. Trump pointed to the Justice Department and the FBI, the system we already have, as the backstop. He also said an AI czar would be named in the next three or four days, and he floated a committee of about ten people to watch the industry. I am not going to fold those into one office. Neither one is a law passed by Congress.

Among the people reported at the lunch were Greg Brockman of OpenAI, Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, and Jeff Bezos. Sam Altman was not the OpenAI executive in that lineup. Brockman was. I am not going to invent a full list of signatures. No public signature page was available when this was written. Trump said the group signed. That is his claim about the people in the room.

Amodei, on camera, said the risks are real and that the mechanism for addressing them is still under discussion. The mechanism was still under discussion at the lunch where they signed the pledge.

On September 23, Delaware’s attorney general signed a letter with attorneys general from other states urging Congress to pass real federal safety rules. Their point was that self-regulation is not enough. They asked for independent testing, incident reporting, and room for states to keep enforcing their own laws. That letter is six days old. Today’s accord does not answer it.

Delaware has already drawn lines the lunch did not. State law says an artificial intelligence system cannot be licensed as a doctor or a nurse, and it cannot use those titles. State law gives people a remedy when someone uses a deepfake to fake an intimate image. State privacy law lets people opt out of certain automated decisions that carry legal or similarly serious effects. Those are rules. A morally binding lunch is not a substitute for them.

Trump also said the executives agreed to put more money toward local schools, or to cut energy costs, so communities would stop fighting data centers. That is his account. I have not seen the companies confirm it, and I am not going to invent a Delaware data-center fight to make the point local. The local point is already on paper. Families here deal with scams, fake images, and software that wants the title of a clinician. The people who decide whether any of that is against the rules should not be only the people who sell the software.

I spent years as a travel ICU nurse. You do not skip the safety check because the person who owns the machine says they will be careful. Transparency is not the same thing as a rule that binds. I want independent testing before the most powerful systems are released, a duty to report serious failures, and protection for workers when an employer hides behind an automated decision. I do not want a new name for the same unregulated product. Renaming it “super intelligence” does not make it safe.

This campaign is people-funded. No Super PAC. Ever. I will not take a dime from AI or tech companies or their executives. They had the lunch. They do not get to fund the senator who is supposed to write the rules.

The Delaware Department of Elections lists me as a Qualified write-in candidate. My name is not printed on the ballot. If you are not registered yet, the deadline is Saturday, October 10. On November 3, write TRAVIS JACK STEVENS for U.S. Senate.

With gratitude and determination,

Travis Jack Stevens Write-in candidate for U.S. Senate · Delaware travisjackstevens.com