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[1]
Emboldened by Trump, A.I. Companies Lobby for Fewer Rules
For just over two years, technology leaders at the forefront of developing artificial intelligence had made an unusual request of lawmakers. They wanted Washington to regulate them. The tech executives warned lawmakers that generative A.I., which can produce text and images that mimic human creations, had the potential to disrupt national security and elections, and could eventually eliminate millions of jobs. A.I. could go "quite wrong," Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, testified in Congress in May 2023. "We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening." But since President Trump's election, tech leaders and their companies have changed their tune, and in some cases reversed course, with bold requests of government to stay out of their way, in what has become the most forceful push to advance their products. In recent weeks, Meta, Google, OpenAI and others have asked the Trump administration to block state A.I. laws and to declare that it is legal for them to use copyrighted material to train their A.I. models. They are also lobbying to use federal data to develop the technology, as well as for easier access to energy sources for their computing demands. And they have asked for tax breaks, grants and other incentives. The shift has been enabled by Mr. Trump, who has declared that A.I. is the nation's most valuable weapon to outpace China in advanced technologies. On his first day in office, Mr. Trump signed an executive order to roll back safety testing rules for A.I. used by the government. Two days later, he signed another order, soliciting industry suggestions to create policy to "sustain and enhance America's global A.I. dominance. " Tech companies "are really emboldened by the Trump administration, and even issues like safety and responsible A.I. have disappeared completely from their concerns," said Laura Caroli, a senior fellow at the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonprofit think tank. "The only thing that counts is establishing U.S. leadership in A.I." Many A.I. policy experts worry that such unbridled growth could be accompanied by, among other potential problems, the rapid spread of political and health disinformation; discrimination by automated financial, job and housing application screeners; and cyberattacks. The reversal by the tech leaders is stark. In September 2023, more than a dozen of them endorsed A.I. regulation at a summit on Capitol Hill organized by Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader at the time. At the meeting, Elon Musk warned of "civilizational risks" posed by A.I. In the aftermath, the Biden administration started working with the biggest A.I. companies to voluntarily test their systems for safety and security weaknesses and mandated safety standards for the government. States like California introduced legislation to regulate the technology with safety standards. And publishers, authors and actors sued tech companies over their use of copyrighted material to train their A.I. models. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement regarding news content related to A.I. systems. OpenAI and Microsoft have denied those claims.) But after Mr. Trump won the election in November, tech companies and their leaders immediately ramped up their lobbying. Google, Meta and Microsoft each donated $1 million to Mr. Trump's inauguration, as did Mr. Altman and Apple's Tim Cook. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg threw an inauguration party and has met with Mr. Trump numerous times. Mr. Musk, who has his own A.I. company, xAI, has spent nearly every day at the president's side. In turn, Mr. Trump has hailed A.I. announcements, including a plan by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank to invest $100 billion in A.I. data centers, which are huge buildings full of servers that provide computing power. Trump Administration: Live Updates Updated March 24, 2025, 3:17 p.m. ET15 minutes ago Trump officials discussed a secret plan to attack Yemen in a group text chat.Why does Trump want Greenland? Here's what to know.Trump threatens 25 percent tariffs against any country that buys Venezuelan oil. "We have to be leaning into the A.I. future with optimism and hope," Vice President JD Vance told government officials and tech leaders last week. At an A.I. summit in Paris last month, Mr. Vance also called for "pro-growth" A.I. policies, and warned world leaders against "excessive regulation" that could "kill a transformative industry just as it's taking off." Now tech companies and others affected by A.I. are offering responses to the president's second A.I. executive order, "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence," which mandated development of a pro-growth A.I policy within 180 days. Hundreds of them have filed comments with the National Science Foundation and the Office of Science and Technology Policy to influence that policy. OpenAI filed 15-pages of comments, asking for the federal government to pre-empt states from creating A.I. laws. The San Francisco-based company also invoked DeepSeek, a Chinese chatbot created for a small fraction of the cost of U.S.-developed chatbots, saying it was an important "gauge of the state of this competition" with China. If the Chinese developers "have unfettered access to data and American companies are left without fair use access, the race for A.I. is effectively over," OpenAI said, requesting that the U.S. government turn over data to feed into its systems. Many tech companies also argued that their use of copyrighted works for training A.I. models was legal and that the administration should take their side. OpenAI, Google and Meta said they believed they had legal access to copyrighted works like books, films and art for training. Meta, which has its own A.I. model, called Llama, pushed the White House to issue an executive order or other action to "clarify that the use of publicly available data to train models is unequivocally fair use." Google, Meta, OpenAI and Microsoft said their use of copyrighted data was legal because the information was transformed in the process of training their models and was not being used to replicate the intellectual property of rights holders. Actors, authors, musicians and publishers have argued that the tech companies should compensate them for obtaining and using their works. Some tech companies have also lobbied the Trump administration to endorse "open source" A.I., which essentially makes computer code freely available to be copied, modified and reused. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has pushed hardest for a policy recommendation on open sourcing, which other A.I. companies, like Anthropic, have described as increasing the vulnerability to security risks. Meta has said open source technology speeds up A.I. development and can help start-ups catch up with more established companies. Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm with stakes in dozens of A.I. start-ups, also called for support of open source models, which many of its companies rely on to create A.I. products. And Andreessen Horowitz gave the starkest arguments against new regulations for A.I. Existing laws on safety, consumer protection and civil rights are sufficient, the firm said. "Do prohibit the harms and punish the bad actors, but do not require developers to jump through onerous regulatory hoops based on speculative fear," Andreessen Horowitz said in its comments. Others continued to warn that A.I. needed to be regulated. Civil rights groups called for audits of systems to ensure they do not discriminate against vulnerable populations in housing and employment decisions. Artists and publishers said A.I. companies needed to disclose their use of copyright material and asked the White House to reject the tech industry's arguments that their unauthorized use of intellectual property to train their models was within the bounds of copyright law. The Center for AI Policy, a think tank and lobbying group, called for third-party audits of systems for national security vulnerabilities. "In any other industry, if a product harms or negatively hurts consumers, that project is defective and the same standards should be applied for A.I.," said K.J. Bagchi, vice president of the Center for Civil Rights and Technology, which submitted one of the requests.
[2]
Trump's call for AI deregulation gets strong backing from Big Tech
Major tech firms are pushing the administration of President Donald Trump to loosen rules on building artificial intelligence, arguing it is the only way to maintain a US edge and compete with China. Spooked by generative AI's sudden advance, governments initially scrambled to develop guardrails, as major tech companies rapidly integrated the technology into their products. Since taking office in January, the Trump administration has shifted focus toward accelerating AI development at all costs, pushing aside concerns about the models suffering hallucinations, producing deepfakes, or destroying human jobs. "The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety," Vice President JD Vance told world leaders at a recent AI summit in Paris. This message unsettled international partners, particularly Europe, which had proudly established the EU AI Act as a new standard for keeping the technology in check. But, faced with America's new direction, European officials are now pivoting their messaging toward investment and innovation rather than safety. "We're going to see a significant pullback in terms of the regulatory efforts... worldwide," explained David Danks, professor of data science and philosophy at University of California San Diego. "That certainly has been signaled here in the United States, but we're also seeing it in Europe." 'Step back' Tech companies are capitalizing on this regulatory retreat, seeking the freedom to develop AI technologies that they claim have been too constrained under the Biden administration. One of Trump's first executive actions was dismantling Biden's policies, which had proposed modest guardrails for powerful AI models and directed agencies to prepare to oversee the change. "It's clear that we're taking a step back from that idea that there's going to be a coherent overall approach to AI regulation," noted Karen Silverman, CEO of AI advisory firm Cantellus Group. The Trump administration has invited industry leaders to share their policy vision, emphasizing that the US must maintain its position as the "undeniable leader in AI technology" with minimal investor constraints. The industry submissions will shape the White House's AI action plan, expected this summer. The request has yielded predictable responses from major players, with a common theme emerging: China represents an existential threat which can only be addressed by plowing an open path for companies unencumbered by regulation. OpenAI's submission probably goes the furthest in its contrast with China, highlighting DeepSeek, a Chinese-developed generative AI model created at a fraction of American development costs, to emphasize the competitive threat. According to OpenAI, American AI development should be "protected from both autocratic powers that would take people's freedoms away, and layers of laws and bureaucracy that would prevent our realizing them." For AI analyst Zvi Mowshowitz, OpenAI's "goal is to have the federal government not only not regulate AI," but also ban individual US states from doing so. Currently engaged in litigation with the New York Times over the use of its content for training, OpenAI also argues that restricting access to online data would concede the AI race to China. "Without fair use access to copyrighted material...America loses, as does the success of democratic AI," OpenAI said. Another response submitted by a group of Hollywood celebrities -- including Ben Stiller and Cynthia Erivo -- rejected the notion, reflecting the film and television industry's contentious relationship with the technology. 'Essential' In its response, Meta touted its open Llama AI model as part of the fight for American technological superiority. "Open source models are essential for the US to win the AI race against China and ensure American AI dominance," the company stated. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has even advocated for retaliatory tariffs against European regulatory efforts. Google's input focused on infrastructure investment for AI's substantial energy requirements. Like its peers, Google also opposes state-by-state regulations in the US that it claims would undermine America's technological leadership. Despite the push for minimal oversight, industry observers caution that generative AI carries inherent risks, with or without government regulation. "Bad press is universal, and if your technology leads to really bad outcomes, you're going to get raked over the public relations coals," warned Danks. Companies have no choice but to mitigate the dangers, he added.
[3]
Emboldened by Trump, artificial intelligence companies lobby for fewer rules
WASHINGTON -- For just over two years, technology leaders at the forefront of developing artificial intelligence had made an unusual request of lawmakers. They wanted Washington to regulate them. The tech executives warned lawmakers that generative AI, which can produce text and images that mimic human creations, had the potential to disrupt national security and elections, and could eventually eliminate millions of jobs. AI could go "quite wrong," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified in Congress in May 2023. "We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening." But since President Donald Trump's election, tech leaders and their companies have changed their tune and, in some cases, reversed course, with bold requests of government to stay out of their way, in what has become the most forceful push to advance their products. In recent weeks, Meta, Google, OpenAI and others have asked the Trump administration to block state AI laws and to declare that it is legal for them to use copyrighted material to train their AI models. They are also lobbying to use federal data to develop the technology, as well as for easier access to energy sources for their computing demands. And they have asked for tax breaks, grants and other incentives. The shift has been enabled by Trump, who has declared that AI is the nation's most valuable weapon to outpace China in advanced technologies. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to roll back safety testing rules for AI used by the government. Two days later, he signed another order, soliciting industry suggestions to create policy to "sustain and enhance America's global AI dominance." Tech companies "are really emboldened by the Trump administration, and even issues such as safety and responsible AI have disappeared completely from their concerns," said Laura Caroli, a senior fellow at the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonprofit think tank. "The only thing that counts is establishing U.S. leadership in AI." Many AI policy experts worry that such unbridled growth could be accompanied by, among other potential problems, the rapid spread of political and health disinformation; discrimination by automated financial, job and housing application screeners; and cyberattacks. The reversal by the tech leaders is stark. In September 2023, more than a dozen of them endorsed AI regulation at a summit on Capitol Hill organized by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the majority leader at the time. At the meeting, Elon Musk warned of "civilizational risks" posed by AI. In the aftermath, the Biden administration started working with the biggest AI companies to voluntarily test their systems for safety and security weaknesses and mandated safety standards for the government. States such as California introduced legislation to regulate the technology with safety standards. And publishers, authors and actors sued tech companies over their use of copyrighted material to train their AI models. But after Trump won the election in November, tech companies and their leaders immediately ramped up their lobbying. Google, Meta and Microsoft each donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration, as did Altman and Apple's Tim Cook. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg threw an inauguration party and has met with Trump numerous times. Musk, who has his own AI company, xAI, has spent nearly every day at the president's side. In turn, Trump has hailed AI announcements, including a plan by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank to invest $100 billion in AI data centers, which are huge buildings full of servers that provide computing power. "We have to be leaning into the AI future with optimism and hope," Vice President JD Vance told government officials and tech leaders last week. At an AI summit in Paris last month, Vance also called for "pro-growth" AI policies and warned world leaders against "excessive regulation" that could "kill a transformative industry just as it's taking off." Now, tech companies and others affected by AI are offering responses to the president's second AI executive order, "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence," which mandated development of a pro-growth AI policy within 180 days. Hundreds of them have filed comments with the National Science Foundation and the Office of Science and Technology Policy to influence that policy. OpenAI filed 15 pages of comments, asking for the federal government to preempt states from creating AI laws. The San Francisco-based company also invoked DeepSeek, a Chinese chatbot created for a small fraction of the cost of U.S.-developed chatbots, saying it was an important "gauge of the state of this competition" with China. If the Chinese developers "have unfettered access to data and American companies are left without fair-use access, the race for AI is effectively over," OpenAI said, requesting that the U.S. government turn over data to feed into its systems. Many tech companies also argued that their use of copyrighted works for training AI models was legal and that the administration should take their side. OpenAI, Google and Meta said they believed they had legal access to copyrighted works such as books, films and art for training. Meta, which has its own AI model, called Llama, pushed the White House to issue an executive order or other action to "clarify that the use of publicly available data to train models is unequivocally fair use." Google, Meta, OpenAI and Microsoft said their use of copyrighted data was legal because the information was transformed in the process of training their models and was not being used to replicate the intellectual property of rights holders. Actors, authors, musicians and publishers have argued that the tech companies should compensate them for obtaining and using their works. Some tech companies have also lobbied the Trump administration to endorse "open source" AI, which essentially makes computer code freely available to be copied, modified and reused. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has pushed hardest for a policy recommendation on open sourcing, which other AI companies, including Anthropic, have described as increasing the vulnerability to security risks. Meta has said open source technology speeds up AI development and can help startups catch up with more established companies. Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm with stakes in dozens of AI startups, also called for support of open source models, which many of its companies rely on to create AI products. And Andreessen Horowitz gave the starkest arguments against new regulations for AI. Existing laws on safety, consumer protection and civil rights are sufficient, the firm said. "Do prohibit the harms and punish the bad actors, but do not require developers to jump through onerous regulatory hoops based on speculative fear," Andreessen Horowitz said in its comments. Others continued to warn that AI needed to be regulated. Civil rights groups called for audits of systems to ensure they do not discriminate against vulnerable populations in housing and employment decisions. Artists and publishers said AI companies needed to disclose their use of copyright material and asked the White House to reject the tech industry's arguments that their unauthorized use of intellectual property to train their models was within the bounds of copyright law. The Center for AI Policy, a think tank and lobbying group, called for third-party audits of systems for national security vulnerabilities. "In any other industry, if a product harms or negatively hurts consumers, that project is defective and the same standards should be applied for AI," said K.J. Bagchi, vice president of the Center for Civil Rights and Technology, which submitted one of the requests.
[4]
Trump's call for AI deregulation gets strong backing from Big Tech
Major tech firms are pushing the administration of President Donald Trump to loosen rules on building artificial intelligence, arguing it is the only way to maintain a US edge and compete with China. The Trump administration has invited industry leaders to share their policy vision, emphasizing that the US must maintain its position as the "undeniable leader in AI technology" with minimal investor constraints.Washington, Mar 21, 2025 -Major tech firms are pushing the administration of President Donald Trump to loosen rules on building artificial intelligence, arguing it is the only way to maintain a US edge and compete with China. Spooked by generative AI's sudden advance, governments initially scrambled to develop guardrails, as major tech companies rapidly integrated the technology into their products. Since taking office in January, the Trump administration has shifted focus toward accelerating AI development at all costs, pushing aside concerns about the models suffering hallucinations, producing deepfakes, or destroying human jobs. "The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety," Vice President JD Vance told world leaders at a recent AI summit in Paris. This message unsettled international partners, particularly Europe, which had proudly established the EU AI Act as a new standard for keeping the technology in check. But, faced with America's new direction, European officials are now pivoting their messaging toward investment and innovation rather than safety. "We're going to see a significant pullback in terms of the regulatory efforts... worldwide," explained David Danks, professor of data science and philosophy at University of California San Diego. "That certainly has been signaled here in the United States, but we're also seeing it in Europe." 'Step back' Tech companies are capitalizing on this regulatory retreat, seeking the freedom to develop AI technologies that they claim have been too constrained under the Biden administration. One of Trump's first executive actions was dismantling Biden's policies, which had proposed modest guardrails for powerful AI models and directed agencies to prepare to oversee the change. "It's clear that we're taking a step back from that idea that there's going to be a coherent overall approach to AI regulation," noted Karen Silverman, CEO of AI advisory firm Cantellus Group. The Trump administration has invited industry leaders to share their policy vision, emphasizing that the US must maintain its position as the "undeniable leader in AI technology" with minimal investor constraints. The industry submissions will shape the White House's AI action plan, expected this summer. The request has yielded predictable responses from major players, with a common theme emerging: China represents an existential threat which can only be addressed by plowing an open path for companies unencumbered by regulation. OpenAI's submission probably goes the furthest in its contrast with China, highlighting DeepSeek, a Chinese-developed generative AI model created at a fraction of American development costs, to emphasize the competitive threat. According to OpenAI, American AI development should be "protected from both autocratic powers that would take people's freedoms away, and layers of laws and bureaucracy that would prevent our realizing them." For AI analyst Zvi Mowshowitz, OpenAI's "goal is to have the federal government not only not regulate AI," but also ban individual US states from doing so. Currently engaged in litigation with the New York Times over the use of its content for training, OpenAI also argues that restricting access to online data would concede the AI race to China. "Without fair use access to copyrighted material...America loses, as does the success of democratic AI," OpenAI said. Another response submitted by a group of Hollywood celebrities -- including Ben Stiller and Cynthia Erivo -- rejected the notion, reflecting the film and television industry's contentious relationship with the technology. 'Essential' In its response, Meta touted its open Llama AI model as part of the fight for American technological superiority. "Open source models are essential for the US to win the AI race against China and ensure American AI dominance," the company stated. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has even advocated for retaliatory tariffs against European regulatory efforts. Google's input focused on infrastructure investment for AI's substantial energy requirements. Like its peers, Google also opposes state-by-state regulations in the US that it claims would undermine America's technological leadership. Despite the push for minimal oversight, industry observers caution that generative AI carries inherent risks, with or without government regulation. "Bad press is universal, and if your technology leads to really bad outcomes, you're going to get raked over the public relations coals," warned Danks. Companies have no choice but to mitigate the dangers, he added.
[5]
Emboldened by Donald Trump, artificial intelligence companies lobby for fewer rules
For just over two years, technology leaders at the forefront of developing artificial intelligence had made an unusual request of lawmakers. They wanted Washington to regulate them. The tech executives warned lawmakers that generative AI, which can produce text and images that mimic human creations, had the potential to disrupt national security and elections, and could eventually eliminate millions of jobs. AI could go "quite wrong," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified in Congress in May 2023. "We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening." But since President Donald Trump's election, tech leaders and their companies have changed their tune and, in some cases, reversed course, with bold requests of government to stay out of their way, in what has become the most forceful push to advance their products. In recent weeks, Meta, Google, OpenAI and others have asked the Trump administration to block state AI laws and to declare that it is legal for them to use copyrighted material to train their AI models. They are also lobbying to use federal data to develop the technology, as well as for easier access to energy sources for their computing demands. And they have asked for tax breaks, grants and other incentives. The shift has been enabled by Trump, who has declared that AI is the nation's most valuable weapon to outpace China in advanced technologies. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to roll back safety testing rules for AI used by the government. Two days later, he signed another order, soliciting industry suggestions to create policy to "sustain and enhance America's global AI dominance." Tech companies "are really emboldened by the Trump administration, and even issues such as safety and responsible AI have disappeared completely from their concerns," said Laura Caroli, a senior fellow at the Wadhwani AI Centre at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a non-profit think tank. "The only thing that counts is establishing U.S. leadership in AI." Many AI policy experts worry that such unbridled growth could be accompanied by, among other potential problems, the rapid spread of political and health disinformation; discrimination by automated financial, job and housing application screeners; and cyberattacks. The reversal by the tech leaders is stark. In September 2023, more than a dozen of them endorsed AI regulation at a summit on Capitol Hill organized by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the majority leader at the time. At the meeting, Elon Musk warned of "civilizational risks" posed by AI. In the aftermath, the Biden administration started working with the biggest AI companies to voluntarily test their systems for safety and security weaknesses and mandated safety standards for the government. States such as California introduced legislation to regulate the technology with safety standards. And publishers, authors and actors sued tech companies over their use of copyrighted material to train their AI models. But after Trump won the election in November, tech companies and their leaders immediately ramped up their lobbying. Google, Meta and Microsoft each donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration, as did Altman and Apple's Tim Cook. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg threw an inauguration party and has met with Trump numerous times. Musk, who has his own AI company, xAI, has spent nearly every day at the president's side. In turn, Trump has hailed AI announcements, including a plan by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank to invest $100 billion in AI data centres, which are huge buildings full of servers that provide computing power. "We have to be leaning into the AI future with optimism and hope," Vice President JD Vance told government officials and tech leaders last week. At an AI summit in Paris last month, Vance also called for "pro-growth" AI policies and warned world leaders against "excessive regulation" that could "kill a transformative industry just as it's taking off." Now, tech companies and others affected by AI are offering responses to the president's second AI executive order, "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence," which mandated development of a pro-growth AI policy within 180 days. Hundreds of them have filed comments with the National Science Foundation and the Office of Science and Technology Policy to influence that policy. OpenAI filed 15 pages of comments, asking for the federal government to pre-empt states from creating AI laws. The San Francisco-based company also invoked DeepSeek, a Chinese chatbot created for a small fraction of the cost of U.S.-developed chatbots, saying it was an important "gauge of the state of this competition" with China. If the Chinese developers "have unfettered access to data and American companies are left without fair-use access, the race for AI is effectively over," OpenAI said, requesting that the U.S. government turn over data to feed into its systems. Many tech companies also argued that their use of copyrighted works for training AI models was legal and that the administration should take their side. OpenAI, Google and Meta said they believed they had legal access to copyrighted works such as books, films and art for training. Meta, which has its own AI model, called Llama, pushed the White House to issue an executive order or other action to "clarify that the use of publicly available data to train models is unequivocally fair use." Google, Meta, OpenAI and Microsoft said their use of copyrighted data was legal because the information was transformed in the process of training their models and was not being used to replicate the intellectual property of rights holders. Actors, authors, musicians and publishers have argued that the tech companies should compensate them for obtaining and using their works. Some tech companies have also lobbied the Trump administration to endorse "open source" AI, which essentially makes computer code freely available to be copied, modified and reused. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has pushed hardest for a policy recommendation on open sourcing, which other AI companies, including Anthropic, have described as increasing the vulnerability to security risks. Meta has said open source technology speeds up AI development and can help startups catch up with more established companies. Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm with stakes in dozens of AI startups, also called for support of open source models, which many of its companies rely on to create AI products. And Andreessen Horowitz gave the starkest arguments against new regulations for AI. Existing laws on safety, consumer protection and civil rights are sufficient, the firm said. "Do prohibit the harms and punish the bad actors, but do not require developers to jump through onerous regulatory hoops based on speculative fear," Andreessen Horowitz said in its comments. Others continued to warn that AI needed to be regulated. Civil rights groups called for audits of systems to ensure they do not discriminate against vulnerable populations in housing and employment decisions. Artists and publishers said AI companies needed to disclose their use of copyright material and asked the White House to reject the tech industry's arguments that their unauthorized use of intellectual property to train their models was within the bounds of copyright law. The Centre for AI Policy, a think tank and lobbying group, called for third-party audits of systems for national security vulnerabilities. "In any other industry, if a product harms or negatively hurts consumers, that project is defective and the same standards should be applied for AI," said K.J. Bagchi, vice president of the Centre for Civil Rights and Technology, which submitted one of the requests.
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Major tech companies are lobbying the Trump administration for fewer AI regulations, reversing their previous stance on government oversight. This shift comes as Trump prioritizes AI development to compete with China.
The Trump administration has dramatically altered the landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) regulation in the United States. President Donald Trump, upon taking office, signed executive orders rolling back safety testing rules for AI used by the government and soliciting industry suggestions to enhance America's global AI dominance 12. This marks a significant departure from the previous administration's approach, which had proposed modest guardrails for powerful AI models.
Major tech companies, including Meta, Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft, have seized this opportunity to lobby for fewer rules governing AI development 13. These companies are now making bold requests for the government to stay out of their way, reversing their previous stance on regulation. Their arguments center around maintaining U.S. technological superiority, particularly in competition with China 4.
Tech giants are pushing for several key policy changes:
A significant point of contention is the use of copyrighted works for AI training. Companies like OpenAI, Google, and Meta argue that their use of such material falls under fair use 15. However, this stance is being challenged by actors, authors, musicians, and publishers who believe they should be compensated for the use of their works 5.
The U.S. shift towards deregulation has unsettled international partners, particularly Europe, which had established the EU AI Act as a new standard for AI oversight. Faced with America's new direction, European officials are now pivoting their messaging towards investment and innovation rather than safety 4.
Many AI policy experts worry that unbridled growth could lead to various problems, including:
Critics argue that the tech companies are prioritizing competitive advantage over safety and responsible AI development 2.
In response to Trump's executive order on "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence," hundreds of tech companies and stakeholders have filed comments to influence the upcoming White House AI action plan 13. OpenAI, for instance, submitted a 15-page document emphasizing the threat of Chinese AI development and arguing for unrestrained access to data 14.
As the Trump administration prepares its AI action plan, expected this summer, the tech industry's influence on policy direction is evident. However, some observers caution that even without government regulation, companies will need to mitigate the inherent risks of generative AI to avoid public relations backlash 45.
Reference
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[4]
OpenAI submits a proposal to the Trump administration's AI Action Plan, advocating for minimal regulation, federal preemption of state laws, and a focus on competing with China in AI development.
6 Sources
6 Sources
The Trump administration revokes Biden's AI executive order, signaling a major shift towards deregulation and market-driven AI development in the US. This move raises concerns about safety, ethics, and international cooperation in AI governance.
4 Sources
4 Sources
President Donald Trump signs a new executive order on AI, rescinding Biden-era policies and calling for AI development free from 'ideological bias'. The move sparks debate on innovation versus safety in AI advancement.
44 Sources
44 Sources
As the US government transitions to full Republican control, the future of AI regulations becomes uncertain. The new administration's focus on deregulation raises questions about the balance between innovation and safeguards in AI development.
5 Sources
5 Sources
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, outmaneuvered rival Elon Musk by securing a $100 billion deal with the Trump administration for AI infrastructure, positioning OpenAI at the forefront of the U.S. AI agenda.
4 Sources
4 Sources
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