Lightning Round: AI From All Angles

So the AI executive order that wasn't, at least hasn't been yet, shall we say.

So on May 21st, everything was set for this big White House signing ceremony for this, what we thought was going to be an AI order.

And in fact, you and I were thinking of pivoting and And actually recording a special episode on that as soon as it came out.

And tech CEOs had been invited.

The press had been invited and briefed that morning.

And apparently the order was typed up and ready for signature.

Yeah.

And then just hours before the ceremony, President Trump pulled the plug on the whole thing.

He had told reporters that he didn't like certain aspects of it.

And he was worried that it would interfere with America's competitive edge in AI, which, you know, as we've discussed many, many times, is really kind of the overriding theme of a lot of the administration's activity on AI.

And so his quote was about the canceling of the order, was that we're leading China, we're leading everybody, and that he didn't want to do anything that's going to get in the way of that lead.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I agree with you.

I think that from the July executive order, then the December executive order, then the March executive order, we've seen sort of the signs of this.

So it's not surprising that he will at least wait until he gets it to the point that he thinks it's consistent with many of the things that he's already said.

But what was in the order that almost was and still might be And we only have reporting based on a leaked draft.

And so I just want to caution people that, you know, this is not an executive order.

This is just reporting on what might have been.

So first, there was going to be a cybersecurity section, apparently, that would have directed agencies to shore up their defenses against AI-fueled cyber attacks.

And second, there was going to be a part And this is sort of what apparently concerned the president, that had a voluntary framework for AI developers to share advanced models with the government for a kind of security review prior to public release.

And there was going to be up to a 90-day pre-launch review window.

So it was going to be voluntary, but it was going to be a pre-launch review.

Yeah, and that's what I think is so interesting about all of the changing positions, right, in that whole voluntary aspect, because it stated that nothing was going to be construed to authorize the creation of a mandatory licensing or permitting requirement for new AI models.

So in that way, it actually resembled the agreements that the federal government had already made with some model developers like Microsoft, Google, and XAI for early access to their models.

Right.