“We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders innovation in AI and imposes radical left-wing ideas on the development of this technology.”

Donald Trump will now be the next president of the United States, leaving the future of AI regulation in this country wide open.

This is because Trump has promised to repeal existing laws. AI Regulations Implemented by Outgoing President Joe Bidenwhich were possibly light to begin with. If Trump keeps his promise, unbridled development of AI could well be the order of the day.

“We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders innovation in AI and imposes radical left-wing ideas on the development of this technology,” Trump stated in his campaign platform. “Instead, Republicans support AI development based on free speech and human flourishing.”

By executive order, the Biden administration approved its existing AI regulations in October 2023 using a 1950 national defense law as justification, meaning they were already on shaky legal ground in the eyes of their opponents. However, that’s not really relevant now, since all Trump has to do is pass a counterorder to deny it.

The technological, accelerationist and conservative criticism of Biden’s AI order is primarily directed at two of its provisions, in cablingthe analysis.

One sets new requirements for how technology companies test and conduct risk assessments of their AI models, a practice known as “red teaming.” Under Biden’s provision, companies that develop large AI models must share all red team test results with the federal government for review, assessing things like how vulnerable the AIs are to being hacked. Critics describe this process as needlessly slowing the pace of AI development and forcing companies to reveal their trade secrets.

The other provision of note requires the National Institute of Standards and Technology to draft guidelines to, among other things, ensure that AI models are free of biases that could discriminate against certain groups based on factors such as race or gender. That’s the part that Trump and his ilk see as an imposition of “radical left-wing ideas.”

It’s impossible to separate the conversation from Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, and X, formerly Twitter. He has criticized big AI models like ChatGPT for being “I woke up,” and launched his own artificial intelligence and chatbot startup, a company based on the techno-optimistic rhetoric of “understanding the universe.” Musk sued OpenAI earlier this year supposedly for the “benefit of humanity,” because the now-Microsoft-backed startup strayed from its initial nonprofit goals.

Those point to an ulterior motive. like a great donor to the Trump campaign, for which it is earned a place in the incoming president’s inner circleMusk stands to gain a lot from Trump’s relaxed regulations, which could allow his AI companies to gain ground on big tech competitors that had a years-long head start.

More broadly, Trump is likely to oversee further deregulation of the tech industry overall, and especially cryptocurrenciesthat has become your latest dubious business after him flip flops from a vociferous critic to a great promoter.

However, it is unclear what all this means for big tech monopolies in particular. Several of the Federal Trade Commission’s largest antitrust lawsuits against companies like Google and Amazon were launched during Trump’s first term and continued during Biden’s.

However, Trump has recently been more skeptical about the Biden-led Justice Department’s attempts to break up Google’s massive monopoly on search engines, as it Reuters noted. Muddying the waters, his running mate and future vice president JD Vance is in the registry as a supporter of Biden’s FTC antitrust enforcement against Big Tech.

As for what Trump plans to replace Biden’s AI executive order with, it’s still unclear. The platform does not specify a detailed policy course, beyond looser regulations and culture war meanings.

But in all likelihood, the new administration can be expected to seek an era of laissez-faire in the development of AI, which, for a technology its proponents have consistently insisted, will soon be smart enough to rival humans. and potentially destroying society as we know itIt’s more than a little worrying. Of course, those might be industry hype, but there are still plenty of mundane consequences of AI to worry about, such as widespread job destruction and voracious energy consumptionthat could be swept under the rug.

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