As sentiment towards AI and big tech continues to sour among US voters, President Donald Trump surrounded himself with technology executives to unveil a new AI-powered website that he insisted would simplify various government services.
The US President praised the new website, America.gov, describing it as a complicated but worthwhile project.
“It's a restoration of America's founding promise and it's a reinvention of your government for the 21st century and beyond,” he said, highlighting a simplified design that would streamline various services. “It's one front door for every single question,” he continued.
Before Mr Trump spoke, prominent motivational coach Tony Robbins kicked off the event. He said that the unveiling of the new website was not a partisan event. “It's about changing the relationship between citizens and their government,” Mr Robbins said.
He then paraphrased an oft-used line from the former US president Ronald Reagan: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.'”
Shortly after Mr Robbins kicked off the event, Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia was introduced. Mr Gebbia, who also serves the Trump administration as chief US design officer, played a major role in creating and designing the newly unveiled America.gov, according to the White House.
Mr Gebbia showed an example of how the new website was designed to be a one-stop shop, making use of 29,000 US government websites and, in turn, making it possible to cut down on the need to navigate multiple sites. Mr Gebbia cautioned, however, that the website's full functionality would not be ready until 2027.
Without giving specifics, he also highlighted the site's use of AI. “Under the hood, it's an extraordinary use of AI designed to improve your life,” he said.
He gave credit to the National Design Studio, which was created through an executive order signed by President Trump, and which seeks to “modernise the interfaces that serve everyday citizens”.
Mr Gebbia spoke about the website for approximately 15 minutes before ending his presentation to a brief round of applause from the audience at the Andrew W Mellon Auditorium in Washington. Trump loyalist, former Trump administration appointee and technology tycoon Elon Musk was in attendance, as was Nvidia's chief executive Jensen Huang.
Shortly after Mr Trump started speaking, he told the crowd that the new website would nullify what he described as an excuse that people used to oppose the requirement to show government identification to vote in US elections.
“They're always saying it's too complicated, but with this, it's not complicated any more,” he said. He added that he hoped the website would lead to the passage of what he called the Save America Act, which would require proof of citizenship for all US voters. He also claimed the new website is almost “impossible to hack.”
The White House's decision to put AI and technology executives at the centre of this event is likely to provoke scrutiny. Most of the concerns in the US about AI revolve around fears of what it might do to the labour market, as well as the potential environmental impact, due to the proliferation of data centres.
In recent months, Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta and the Alphabet-owned Google have all acknowledged that AI models have somehow escaped their digital testing confines and managed to compromise various aspects of public and private digital infrastructure.
The recent incidents have confirmed the worst fears about AI frequently raised by cyber security experts, while at the same time bringing forth new worries. In turn, public polling in the US and other countries shows increasing concerns.
At the conclusion of Mr Trump's speech, he scoffed at the idea of greater regulation of AI. “Whoever wins superintelligence, wins,” he said, adding that if the US regulates AI, it will lose what he described as a “race with China”.
Several hours after introducing the new website, President Trump confirmed on his app, Truth Social that he was hosting a lunch with dozens of technology and AI executives.
A seating chart showed that Palantir's Alex Karp, AMD's Lisa Su, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, Nvidia's Jensen Huang and Google's Sundar Pichai were among those in attendance.
Mr Trump posted a seating chart and referred to Tuesday's event as a super intelligence luncheon.
