Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
President Donald Trump continues to devote his first week in office to signing executive orders, one of which has already been struck down by a judge for violating the US constitution.
The White House announced that Trump has signed a new executive order designed to maintain the global leadership of the US in AI technology, and which is focused on “artificial intelligence (AI) innovation.”
“To maintain this leadership, we must develop AI systems that are free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas,” the executive order states. “With the right Government policies, we can solidify our position as the global leader in AI and secure a brighter future for all Americans.”
“This order revokes certain existing AI policies and directives that act as barriers to American AI innovation, clearing a path for the United States to act decisively to retain global leadership in artificial intelligence,” it states.
Executive order
Trump’s order did not reveal which particular policies are hindering AI development but sets out to track down and review “all policies, directives, regulations, orders, and other actions taken” as a result of former President Joe Biden’s sweeping AI executive order of 2023, which Trump had rescinded Monday.
A key part of that Biden order was a requirement that tech companies building the most powerful AI models share details with the government about the workings of those systems, before they are delivered to the public.
Trump has now rescinded that requirement.
Besides that, in 2024 the Biden administration had also gathered more than 200 organisations to sign up to the Biden Administration’s AI Safety Institute, including prominent players in the AI sector.
And as one of his acts as US President, Biden also signed an executive order to bolster energy infrastructure in the US to help power the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
The Biden order had directed federal agencies to accelerate large-scale AI infrastructure development at government sites; and also orders certain federal agencies to make federal sites owned by the US Defense and Energy departments available for leasing, in order to host gigawatt-scale AI data centres as well as clean power facilities (i.e. geothermal, solar, wind, and nuclear energy).
AI action plan
And it seems the Trump directive seeks to revoke any of those Biden-era actions if they don’t fit Trump’s new directive that AI should “promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.”
Trump’s order also calls for the development of an AI action plan within 180 days.
The team that will be lead the work will be made up of White House tech and science officials, including a new Special Advisor for AI and Crypto -namely venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks.
The new actions threaten to erase some of the Biden administration’s efforts — championed by then-Vice President Kamala Harris — to curb government use of the kinds of AI tools that have been found to unfairly discriminate based on race, gender or disability.
Racial discrimination and bias by AI and facial recognition systems has been a concern for many years now.
Stargate Project
The Trump executive order comes after a number of tech giants created a joint venture that will drive $500 billion AI infrastructure in the United States, much to the delight of President Trump, although in reality the scheme began under President Biden.
Known as ‘The Stargate Project’, its initial equity funders are ChatGPT creator OpenAI, Japanese investment firm SoftBank, software giant Oracle, and an Emirati sovereign wealth fund called MGX.
“The Stargate Project is a new company which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States,” they announced. “We will begin deploying $100 billion immediately.”
Executive order blocked
It should be noted that Trump has already had one of his executive orders temporarily blocked by a federal judge.
His offending order centred on denying US citizenship to the children of any parents found to be living in the United States illegally
A US judge at the federal courthouse in Seattle this week ordered an injunction, temporarily blocking Donald Trump’s order.
The judge called the order “blatantly unconstitutional”, however Trump said he will appeal the decision.