Trump’s AI Order Vaporizes On Day of Signing

The president has previously stated that he wanted no regulation of AI and even sent a memo (technically an EO) to his minions to sue states that dared to implement guardrails on AI.

But then came Mythos. Some of the president’s people saw that Mythos-LIKE tools, not just Mythos itself, gives hackers a huge increase in effectiveness that likely most businesses would wind up on the wrong side of.

In a trial balloon, the White House suggested forcing AI companies to submit their AI models to the government for review prior to releasing them. Needless to say, that went over like a lead balloon.

So then they came up with an idea for a voluntary review if companies wanted to participate (note that this this administration tends to sue people who don’t follow their so-called-voluntary rules, so some people thought that was not a good idea). Still some companies agreed to this and so an Executive Order (EO) was drafted and about to be signed.

The president claimed he postponed signing the EO because “he didn’t like certain aspects of it”. Which aspects he did not say. More likely, campaign donors whined at him and since he likes their donations he said no EO.

Part of this is that AI has fueled the stock market and even though that fuel only helps a limited part of the population – most notably rich campaign donors – it does help retirement plans for people that have them.

Separate from the EO, the Commerce department has announced deals with Google, Microsoft and Twitter to let it evaluate AI models, in a classified environment, before they are released. This means that you and I will never hear about what, if anything, they found. It only affects a couple of the biggies. For example, it doesn’t include Meta and Oracle.

What this means is that states will continue to pass their own AI laws, including red states; the DoJ will continue to at least make noise about suing some states, likely only blue states, over their AI laws, consumers will be left with limited protections depending on what their state laws say and the political mess will continue.

Credit: CNBC

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