The AI Daily Brief: Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis - The Implications of Trump's Win for AI

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

A reading and discussion inspired by https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/06/what-trumps-victory-could-mean-for-ai-regulation/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/06/technology/trump-musk-ai-crypto.htmlhttps://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-battle-over-open-source-ai-will-be-settled-in-trumps-presidency?rc=jrwr4u Brought to you by: Vanta - Simplify compliance - ⁠⁠vanta.com/nlw⁠⁠The AI Daily Brief helps you understand the most important news and discussions in AI. Subscribe to the podcast version of The AI Daily Brief wherever you listen: https://pod.link/1680633614 Subscribe to the newsletter: https://aidailybrief.beehiiv.com/ Join our Discord: https://bit.ly/aibreakdown

Today on the AI Daily Brief, the AI Implications of Last Night's Elections. The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI. To join the conversation, follow the Discord link in our show notes. Hello, friends. Yesterday was, of course, a very consequential election, where, frankly, we have a little bit more certainty around what happened than I thought we were going to. And so today what we're going to do is sort of a long read style show, although we're going to do it in the immediate aftermath as people try to make sense of what the implications are, specifically for artificial intelligence. So what we have are one full op-ed plus two segments of pieces, all about AI in the elections and what happens next. And the first is a segment from Kevin Roos in the

New York Times from a larger piece called What a Trump victory means for tech. The section is called AI Progress Accelerates. By the way, of course, these will be read by the 11 Labs version of myself. And so here's the first. AI Progress Accelerates. Neither Mr. Trump nor Ms. Harris said much about artificial intelligence on the campaign trail. But it's a safe bet that AI progress will continue under a second Trump administration and might even speed up. Some of the tech elites who supported Mr. Trump, including the venture capitalist Mark Andresen, are associated with the accelerationist wing of the AI movement and have opposed any AI regulations that could slow down the industry. To be honest, I'd bet against Mr. Trump's spending much time thinking about AI at all.

He might delegate it to Mr. Vance, who does seem to have some interest in the subject. But to the extent Mr. Trump's views on AI will be shaped by the people in his orbit, it's likely to be in the direction of encouraging American tech companies to race ahead of rivals in China and elsewhere and removing regulatory roadblocks that might get in their way. Interestingly, Mr. Musk is a bit of a wildcard here. He runs an AI company, XAI, that would benefit from light-touch regulation. But he also worries about existential risk from AI, supported a controversial California bill that would have imposed safety standards on AI models,

which many AI companies opposed. All right, back to non-AI NLW here. This one didn't really have all that much in it. Effectively, Roos's argument is that Trump is unlikely to spend all that much time thinking about AI, that JD Van Smite, given that he's a former VC. The most interesting thing about this piece is the question of Elon Musk, where Roos has rightly identified that on the one hand, he has the existential risk worries, but on the other hand, he could benefit from light touch regulation. I think Roos is right to call out that that could

create some interesting tension to the extent that Musk has a seat at the policy table when it comes to AI, although there's no guarantee that that's actually how it's going to play out. All right, next up, we're going to read a broader piece, or AIMe is going to read a broader piece by Kyle Wagers in TechCrunch called What Trump's Victory Could Mean for AI Regulation. A grueling election cycle has come to a close. Donald Trump will be the 47th president of the U.S. and with Republicans in control of the Senate and, possibly the House, his allies are poised to bring sea change to the highest levels of government. The effects will be acutely felt in the AI industry, which is largely rallied against federal policymaking. Trump has repeatedly said he plans to

dismantle Biden's AI policy framework on day one and has aligned himself with kingmakers who've sharply criticized all but the lightest touch regulations. Biden's approach. Biden's AI policy came into force through executive order passed in October 2003. Congressional inaction on regulation precipitated the executive order, whose precepts are voluntary, not compulsory. The AIEO addresses everything from advancing AI in healthcare to developing guidance designed to mitigate risks of IP theft, but two of its more consequential provisions, which have raised the ire of some Republicans, pertain to AI security risks and real-world safety impacts. One provision directs companies developing powerful AI models to report to the government how

their training and securing these models, and to provide the results of test design to probe for model vulnerabilities. The other provision directs the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST, to author guidance that helps companies identify, and correct for flaws in models, including biases. The AIEO accomplished much. In the last year, the Commerce Department established the U.S. AI Safety Institute, AISI, a body to study risks in AI systems, inclusive of systems with defense applications. It also released new software to help improve the trustworthiness of AI, and tested major new AI models through agreements with OpenAI and Anthropic.

Critics allied with Trump argued that the EO's reporting requirements are onerous and effectively force companies to disclose their trade secrets. During a House hearing in March, Representative Nancy Mace said they could scare away would-be innovators and impede more chat GPT-type breakthroughs. Because the requirements lean on an interpretation of the Defense Production Act, They've also been labeled by some Republicans in Congress as an example of executive overreach. At a Senate hearing in July, Trump's running mate, J.D. Vance expressed concerns that preemptive over-regulation attempts would entrench the tech incumbents that we already have.

Vance has also been supportive of antitrust, including efforts by FTC Chair Lena Kahn, who's spearheading investigations of big tech companies acquies hires of AI startups. Several Republicans have equated NIST's work on AI with censorship of conservative speech. They accused the Biden administration of attempting to steer AI development with liberal notions about disinformation and bias. Senator Ted Cruz recently slammed NES' woke AI safety standards as a plan to control speech based on amorphous social harms. When I'm re-elected, Trump said at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa last December. I will cancel Biden's artificial intelligence executive order and ban the use of AI to censor the speech of American citizens on day one. Replacing the AI-E-O.

So what could replace Biden's AI EO? Little can be gleaned from the AI executive orders Trump signed during his last presidential term, which founded national AI research institutes and directed federal agencies to prioritize AI R&D. His EEOs mandated that agencies protect civil liberties privacy and American values in applying AI, help workers gain AI relevant skills, and promote the use of trustworthy technologies. During his campaign, Trump promised policies that would support AI development rooted in free speech in human flourishing, but declined to go into detail. Some Republicans have said that they want NIST to focus on AI's physical safety risks,

including its ability to help adversaries build bioweapons, which Biden's EO also addresses. But they've also shied away from endorsing new restrictions on AI, which could jeopardize portions of NIST's guidance. Indeed, the fate of the AISI, which is housed within NIST is murky, While it has a budget director and partnerships with AI Research Institutes worldwide, the AISI could be wound down with a simple repeal of Biden's EO. In an open letter in October, a coalition of companies, non-profits, and universities called on Congress to enact legislation codifying the AESE before the end of the year. Trump has acknowledged that AI is very dangerous and that it'll require massive amounts of power

to develop and run, suggesting a willingness to engage with the growing risks from AI. This being the case, Sarah Kreps, a political scientist who focuses on U.S. defense policy, doesn't expect major AI regulation to emerge from the White House in the next four years. I don't know that Trump's views on AI regulation will rise to the level of antipathy that causes him to repeal the Biden-AIEO, she told TechCrunch. Trade and state rulemaking. Dean Ball, a research fellow at George Mason University, agrees that Trump's victory likely augurs a light-touch regulatory regime,

one that will rely on the application of existing law rather than the creation of new laws. However, Ball predicts that this may embolden state governments, particularly in democratic strongholds like California, to try to fill the void. State-led efforts are well underway. In March, Tennessee passed a law protecting voice artists from AI cloning. This summer, Colorado adopted a tiered, risk-based approach to AI deployments. And in September, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed dozens of AI-related citizens. safety bills, a few of which require companies to publish details about their AI training.

State policymakers have introduced close to 700 pieces of AI legislation this year alone. How the federal government will respond to these challenges is unclear, Ball said. Hamid Ekbia, a professor at Syracuse University studying public affairs, believes that Trump's protectionist policies could have AI regulatory implications. He expects the Trump administration to impose tighter export controls on China, for instance, including controls on the technologies necessary for developing AI. The Biden administration already has in place a number of bans on the export of AI chips and models. However, some Chinese firms are reportedly using loopholes to access the tools through cloud services.

The global regulation of AI will suffer as a consequence of new controls, despite the circumstances that call for more global cooperation, Ekbia said. The political and geopolitical ramifications of this can be huge, enabling more authoritarian and oppressive uses of AI across the globe. Should Trump enact tariffs on the tech necessary to build AI, it could also squeeze the capital needed to fund AI R&D, says Matt Middlestett, another research fellow at George Mason University. During his campaign, Trump proposed a 10% tariff on all U.S. imports and 60% on Chinese-made products. Perhaps the biggest impact will come from trade policies, Middlestead said.

Expect any potential tariffs to have a massive economic impact on the AI sector. Of course, it's early. And while Trump, for the most part, avoided addressing AI on the campaign trail, much of his platform, like his plan to restrict H-1B visas and embrace oil and gas, could have downstream effects on the AI industry. Sandra Wachter, a professor in data ethics at the Oxford Internet Institute, urged regulators, regardless of their political affiliations, not to lose sight of the dangers of AI for its opportunities. These risks exist regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum, she said. These harms do not believe in geography and do not care about party lines. I can only hope that AI governance will not be reduced to a partisan issue.

It is an issue that affects all of us everywhere. We all have to work together to find good global solutions. All right, back to Real NLW here. And once again, we have a big shrug arms thrown up. I have no idea. Specifically, what Kyle is pointing out here is that what Trump has promised to not do or to repeal in the case of the Biden-AI executive order is clear than what he's promised to do when it comes to accelerating AI. I think Kyle is right to identify. one of the areas where AI is going to overlap with the presidency in a significant way is as it relates to trade policy and I think foreign policy more broadly. China policy is obviously going to be a big part of the next Trump administration, and AI is likely to be a big part of China policy.

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Now, one analysis that I did think was pretty interesting is this idea that perhaps in the absence of a strong, clear federal regulatory regime when it comes to AI, state governments might intervene. First, I could absolutely see that happening. And second, if it does, I could also see that being a prompt for a second Trump White House to try to get more involved in pushing through their vision of whatever a light-touch regulatory regime will be. Finally, let's turn it over to our third segment, which was in the information in Stephanie

Palazolo's newsletter. It's called the battle over open-source AI will be settled in Trump's presidency. Heading it back over to the 11 Labs version of myself for this last week. Read. Donald Trump's victory in Tuesday's presidential election has a lot of implications for AI. Some are clear. Trump has said he will repeal President Joe Biden's AI executive order, which requires companies training large AI models to share information about them with the federal government. In another key area, though, Trump's stance isn't certain. That's the hotly contested question of whether freely available, open-source AI such as meta-platforms llama models are a threat

to national security. The issue was put in the spotlight last Friday. when Reuters reported that Mehta's Lama models were being used by Chinese researchers to build AI tools for potential military applications. What made the report particularly problematic for META is that it had prohibited U.S. government agencies and contractors the ability to use Lama for military purposes, although on Tuesday META published a blog post saying it had dropped that prohibition. Allowing the U.S. military to use Lama might not be enough to mollify META's critics on this issue. Trump is anti-China and has historically restricted exports of technology such as encryption software,

drones, and semiconductors. The Biden administration increased those restrictions on technology. It's hard to imagine Trump would agree to let China gain access to state-of-the-art AI models. Already, OpenAI, Anthropic, and other proprietary software makers have said governments should regulate the most capable AI models so bad actors can't easily use them, and Anthropic has explicitly opposed open-source AI over safety concerns. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, for his part, argued in a July blog post that, Our adversaries are great at espionage. Stealing models that fit on a thumb drive is relatively easy,

and most tech companies are far from operating in a way that would make this more difficult. That's a tough argument to make with the national security establishment, even if he's right. Much could depend on who advises Trump on AI policy. For instance, his vice president-elect J.D. Vance has spoken out in support of open-source AI in the past, arguing that the technology will prevent crazy people from using AI to propagate left-wing bias. Trump has also said that he'd ask open-source proponent Elon Musk for advice on tech policy. At the end of the day, though, it's unclear how much influence the two will actually have on Trump's policy. And even if Trump does crack down on open-source AI, all hope might not be lost for meta.

After all, it could always choose to simply make its Lama models closed source. In doing so, though, meta will be entering the tight race between proprietary model developers without two of its major advantages, the benefit Lama users receive from having full control over the model, and the halo effect meta gets from framing itself as a crusader for everyday developers. All right, back to Real Me. Once again, Stephanie here is identifying that there are geopolitical implications and that the foreign and trade policy that Trump wants to pursue vis-à-vis China is going to have a deterministic impact on how he and his White House think about artificial intelligence. What's different about where she's going with this is the open source

AI implications. One of the big points of opposition to California's SB 1047 was of course the unintended potential consequences for open source AI, but is that going to run up against China policy? There are a lot of ways that this could play out and some fairly significant tensions and push and pull from both sides. Now, if you are left feeling at the end of all three of these reads that we just don't know what AI is going to look like under Trump, at least not when it comes to the specifics. It's because, of course, we don't. What is clear, though, is that this will be a major issue for this next administration. It'll be a national security issue, a trade policy issue, an economic competitiveness issue, an energy issue. And so you better believe that from here on out, I'm going to

be spending a lot more time trying to understand how the broader Trump camp thinks about these things and what it might mean for this industry as a whole. For now, though, that is going to do it for today's AI Daily Brief. Appreciate you listening as always, and until next time, peace.