How Trump Was Persuaded to Regulate A.I.
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Winna Liu. I write the game Connections, one of the puzzles from New York Times games. And I love horror movies. I love my dog. And I love trying to trick you. I'm Tracy Bennett. I get to pick the wordle word every day, which is not as easy as it sounds. The fun fact about me is that I am descended from a witch who was put on trial in Salem. New York Times games are made by people, like the ones you just heard from. Go to nytimes.com slash games to start playing today.
Hey, it's Michael. Before we start the show, we want to let you know that our colleague, Pulitzer Prize-winning culture critic and host of the Times podcast Cannonball, Wesley Morris, is going to be hosting a live event next week at the Tribeca Festival. Wesley will be talking to the actress and activist Cynthia Nixon. They'll be having a conversation about great works of art about New York, which makes sense given Nixon's starring role in arguably one of them, Sex and the City. It promises to be a very fun and very smart evening. The show is Friday, June 12th at 6 p.m., and you can get your tickets at tribecafilm.com slash audio. That's tribecafilm.com slash audio. Okay, here's today's show. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barrow.
This is The Daily. Today... the story of how President Trump begrudgingly accepted that the most transformational technology of our time, artificial intelligence, requires government oversight. My colleague, Tripp Mikkel, takes us inside the dramatic White House battle that has played out over the past few weeks and previews the coming fight over just how far federal regulation of AI should go. It's Thursday, June 4th. Tripp, welcome back to The Daily. Thanks so much for having me. I want you to explain exactly what President Trump did a few days ago on Tuesday.
On Tuesday morning, as I was in the middle of my commute, I was bombarded with text messages saying that President Trump had, to many people's surprise, signed an executive order to regulate artificial intelligence. And it gives the government, for the first time really under the Trump administration, oversight over AI models. Hmm. This is a big change for an administration that has had an entirely hands-off approach to regulating the tech industry and the companies that are pushing artificial intelligence forward. What the government has done is said that AI companies will share... their models voluntarily with the government about 30 days before they're released publicly so that the government can review the models and figure out if there are any software vulnerabilities that they could attack.
And then that would allow the government to patch those vulnerabilities and prevent a cyber attack by a foreign adversary or just a bad actor.
This seems like a relatively big ask, which is let us, the government, take a look at your software before the world, before all the businesses that want it, get a chance to buy it. What's the story behind why this administration that has been so hands-off decided at long last to that it should be in the business of regulating artificial intelligence?
Well, it's been on a journey. And that journey began last year when President Trump came into office. And one of the first things he did was sign an executive order that repealed and scrapped all of the rules from the Biden era that were designed to bring some safety processes to bear on artificial intelligence.
And Trump would explain why he did this by saying, To make America great again, we're going to make this industry absolutely the top because right now it's a beautiful baby that's born. We have to grow that baby and let that baby thrive.
The AI industry is a beautiful baby, and you don't want rules to get in the way of a beautiful baby when it's taking its first steps. You just want it to take its first steps, essentially, and let it start to run.
We can't stop it. We can't stop it with politics. We can't stop it with foolish rules and even stupid rules.
And that was the administration's philosophy. And that philosophy was really...
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–10:14
2
What prompted President Trump to sign an executive order on AI regulation?
10:14–11:52
3
How did the White House battle over AI regulation unfold?
11:52–19:31
4
What are the implications of the new AI oversight for tech companies?
19:31–25:59
5
Why did Trump's administration initially resist regulating AI?
25:59–36:07