What Trump’s presidency means for AI
US president-elect Donald Trump is expected to use his second term to introduce sweeping changes to the Biden administration’s stance on artificial intelligence (AI).
According to the Republican Party platform, which outlines key policies and is entitled ‘Make America Great Again’, the Trump-Vance administration will rescind Biden’s Executive Order on AI that was signed in October 2023.
“We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI innovation, and imposes radical leftwing ideas on the development of this technology,” the manifesto says.
“In its place, Republicans support AI development rooted in free speech and human flourishing.”
Biden’s Executive Order set safety and privacy standards for AI to promote its ethical use. It warned that irresponsible use of AI could “exacerbate societal harms such as fraud, discrimination, bias and disinformation”. Along with the risk of deepening social injustices, it also highlighted the potential of AI technologies to “displace and disempower workers; stifle competition; and pose risks to national security”.
Trump’s victory over current vice president Kamala Harris was confirmed after the election on 5 November. During the election campaign, the incoming president narrowly avoided assassination and will likely avoid prison sentencing for 34 felony convictions of falsifying business records. The election result makes Trump the first US president ever to be convicted of a crime.
Webinar: US election: how federal government is getting ready for the new president
Project 2025
In 2023, a Trump-aligned conservative US think tank named The Heritage Foundation published a document outlining several key recommendations for the new administration.
The document was the ninth iteration of a series of policy manifestos that have been published in parallel with presidential elections since 1981.
Among the latest iteration’s recommendations was for a Trump government to “transition to using technology, including…artificial intelligence/machine learning”.
The foundation said that AI, when incorporated into existing business practices, “enables machine interpretation of unstructured text and data, applies decision support technology to enable more consistent classification decisions, and expedites reviews between agencies”. In addition, it called for the expansion of commercial cloud services to facilitate the rapid testing and deployment of new tools and technologies.
It added that “permanent standing teams” should be established and staffed by “properly aligned political appointees and trusted career staff” to accelerate action on AI as a policy priority.
Project 2025 refers to itself online as “a historic movement, brought together by over 100 respected organisations from across the conservative movement, to take down the Deep State and return the government to the people”. Some of the plan’s authors served in Trump’s previous administration.
During the election campaign, Trump distanced himself from Project 2025, insisting he had nothing to do with it.
“I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it – purposefully,” he claimed in September on the debate stage.
Read more: White House directs agencies to harness AI for national security
Role for Musk?
As Trump begins to select senior leaders for his team, a nonprofit AI advocacy group called Americans for Responsible Innovation (ARI) has launched a petition urging him to appoint Elon Musk to the role of special advisor on AI. Musk is the founder of Tesla and owner of the social media platform X, and backed the Trump presidency campaign.
Satya Thallam, ARI’s senior vice president of government affairs, said: “There’s no one better positioned to help the Trump Administration navigate this new technology.”
“Musk knows what it’s going to take to make America lead on safe AI,” Thallam added.
“He is someone who has both pioneered AI advancement and consistently sounded the alarm about AI’s potential risks.”
Musk co-founded OpenAI, whose ChatGPT tool helped propel AI into the mainstream and kickstarted a global conversation around its potential opportunities and risks.
Musk has been critical of private AI corporations, including OpenAI, with whom he entered a legal dispute earlier this year after alleging its CEO Sam Altman had “breached the founding agreement” of the company by pursuing private commercial success over helping humanity. Elon Musk briefly dropped the lawsuit against OpenAI but later relaunched it with similar claims.
In September, Trump pledged to enlist Musk to head a government efficiency drive if he won the election.
He said Musk had urged him to create a government efficiency commission “tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms”.
About Jack Aldane
Jack is a British journalist, cartoonist and podcaster. He graduated from Heythrop College London in 2009 with a BA in philosophy, before living and working in China for three years as a freelance reporter. After training in financial journalism at City University from 2013 to 2014, Jack worked at Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters before moving into editing magazines on global trade and development finance. Shortly after editing opinion writing for UnHerd, he joined the independent think tank ResPublica, where he led a media campaign to change the health and safety requirements around asbestos in UK public buildings. As host and producer of The Booking Club podcast – a conversation series featuring prominent authors and commentators at their favourite restaurants – Jack continues to engage today’s most distinguished thinkers on the biggest problems pertaining to ideology and power in the 21st century. He joined Global Government Forum as its Senior Staff Writer and Community Co-ordinator in 2021.
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