Trump’s Anti-Regulation Pitch Is Exactly What the AI Industry Wants to Hear
There’s a broad expectation the president-elect will reverse attempts to craft rules that put safety ahead of maximum speed in developing the technology.
Donald Trump at a 2020 rally in Bemidji, Minnesota.
Photographer: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
Many people in the tech industry say we’re likely to reach artificial general intelligence—AI that can outperform humans at most tasks—within four years. If they’re right, we’ve just elected our first AGI-era president: Donald Trump.
So far, Trump’s thoughts about navigating this historic shift have been a confused mishmash. In June he sat across from YouTube star Logan Paul for a podcast interview and referred to superintelligence as “super-duper AI.” He expressed some fear about deepfakes, calling them “scary,” “alarming,” “disconcerting.” But he was also delighted by large language models, which impressed him by creating an AI-generated script for a speech. “Unbelievable” and “so fast,” he gushed. “It comes out with the most beautiful writing.” Trump, who’s never been particularly committed to delivering speeches as written, even joked about AI getting good enough that he could fire his writer.