{"id":573808,"date":"2026-05-09T00:09:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T00:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/573808\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T00:09:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T00:09:16","slug":"trump-jumps-from-anything-goes-to-strict-regulation-ai-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/573808\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump jumps from ‘anything goes’ to ‘strict regulation’ AI policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

OPINION When President Donald Trump returned to power, he cast himself as the anti\u2011Biden on AI. First, he
\ntore up Biden’s Executive Order 14110<\/a>, which had
\ndemanded “safe, secure, and trustworthy” AI. He then replaced it with his own “Removing Barriers to American Leadership
\nin Artificial Intelligence” directive, ordering agencies to
\nrescind or dilute rules seen as obstacles to innovation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In short, American AI vendors could do anything they wanted.\u00a0That
\nwas then. This is now.<\/p>\n

While
\nTrump has yet to issue a new AI Executive Order, we know his crew is
\nforming an AI working group of tech execs and
\ngovernment officials to bring oversight to AI. Specifically, they’re
\nconsidering requiring all new “high\u2011risk” AI frontier
\nmodels to undergo a formal government review before they can be used.<\/p>\n

That’s going to go over well. <\/p>\n

What
\nwe do know is that National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett
\nhas said: “We’re studying possibly an executive order to give a
\nclear roadmap to everybody about how this is gonna go, and how future
\nAIs that also potentially create vulnerabilities should go through a
\nprocess so that they\u2019re released into the wild after they’ve been
\nproven safe \u2013
\njust like an FDA drug.<\/a>“<\/p>\n

Considering that people who ignore evidence now regulate healthcare in the United States, that doesn\u2019t fill me with much confidence. Indeed, we
\nnow know the FDA blocked
\nthe publication of studies showing that COVID-19 and shingles
\nvaccines were safe<\/a>. Are these the kinds of people we
\nwant calling the shots on AI?<\/p>\n

Be
\nthat as it may, the Trump yes-men are framing this shift as a
\nresponse to escalating cybersecurity and national\u2011security
\nrisks rather than as a broader embrace of EU\u2011style AI
\nregulation. Yes, they’re looking at Anthropic’s
\nMythos<\/a> and its potential use by hackers. <\/p>\n

At
\nthe same time, they emphasize that they want to avoid “onerous”
\ncontrols on everyday AI applications. Frontier models that could
\nsupercharge cyberwarfare, bio\u2011threats, or other strategic
\ndangers are another matter. <\/p>\n

That’s
\nquite a change from last summer when Trump babbled: “We have to
\ngrow that [AI] baby<\/a> and let that baby thrive. We can’t
\nstop it. We can’t stop it with politics. We can’t stop it with
\nfoolish rules and even stupid rules.”<\/p>\n

Now he seems to think rules would be a good thing. Darrell West,
\na senior fellow at the Center for Technology Innovation at the
\nBrookings Institution, has suggested that Trump
\nis returning to Biden’s policy<\/a>. Just don’t tell him
\nthat; he’ll have a fit. <\/p>\n

While
\nTrump and company are still contemplating exactly how they want to
\nrule \u2013 sorry, regulate \u2013 AI, the Department of Commerce’s Center for AI
\nStandards and Innovation (CAISI) announced new agreements with Google
\nDeepMind, Microsoft, and xAI. According to these new policy
\nstatements, CAISI
\nwill conduct pre-deployment evaluations <\/a>and targeted
\nresearch to better assess frontier AI capabilities and advance the
\nstate of AI security.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CAISI director Chris Fall said:
\n“Independent, rigorous measurement science is essential to
\nunderstanding frontier AI and its national security implications.”\n<\/p>\n

How
\nto do this? Who will do this? What will it look like? Good question! Too bad we don\u2019t have any answers yet. <\/p>\n

You
\nmay have noticed that Anthropic was not invited to this cozy policy
\nget-together. Funny, that, since most observers think that Mythos was
\nthe model that broke the “do anything you want” AI camel’s
\nback in Trump’s White House. <\/p>\n

That’s
\nbecause the months\u2011long feud
\nbetween the administration and Anthropic is still simmering<\/a>.
\nTrump’s team moved to block federal agencies from using the
\ncompany’s tools, and Anthropic is now challenging that policy in
\ncourt. <\/p>\n

Recently,
\nhowever, Trump’s tone has softened. Trump
\ntold CNBC that Anthropic was “shaping up.”<\/a> If he
\ncan’t get peace with Iran, maybe peace with Anthropic will please
\nhim. On the other hand, we also know that the Trumpies
\nare considering forbidding companies from “interfering” with the
\ngovernment’s use of AI models. <\/a>You hear that,
\nAnthropic? You will toe the line! <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Gregory Falco, a Cornell assistant professor of mechanical and
\naerospace engineering, pointed out the obvious: “The federal government\u00a0does not currently have the in-house technical expertise<\/a>,
\ninfrastructure, or day-to-day insight needed to directly evaluate
\nthese systems on its own.” Expertise is
\nsomething Trump’s cast of characters sorely lacks across any and all
\nsubjects.<\/p>\n

“At
\nthe same time,” Falco continued, “a purely voluntary model
\nof self-governance is not enough.” After all, foxes are notorious guardians of chicken houses. <\/p>\n

What
\nI think is going to happen is that AI vendors who play ball with
\nTrump will end up “governing” AI alongside some Trump
\nloyalists. It’s going to be ugly. Some regulation is needed,
\nbut these are not the people who will do a good job of it.<\/p>\n

I won’t be surprised if one of Trump’s goals isn’t so much to make AI
\nsafer as it is to ensure that the answers AI gives are the ones he
\nand his regime want people to see. Today, for example, when I asked a
\nvariety of chatbots who lost the 2020 election, they all agreed Trump
\nhad lost. Funnily enough, when the Senate Judiciary Committee asked numerous Trump nominees for federal judgeships the same question, they universally refused to say he lost<\/a>. <\/p>\n

For
\nbetter or worse, most Americans don’t pay attention to legal news.
\nWhat they do, however, is ask AI chatbots for answers. Foolish of
\nthem, considering how inaccurate they can be, but there it is. If Trump’s
\nallowed to call the shots, I’ve little doubt that the approved bots
\nwill follow in the footsteps of his obedient judges and give the
\nanswers he wants and not the truth.\u00a0\u00ae<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OPINION When President Donald Trump returned to power, he cast himself as the anti\u2011Biden on AI. First, he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-573808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}