Special Edition: The White House’s Executive Order on AI Model Testing, Explained

Okay, so let's get right to it.

So, you know, we want to talk about this June 2nd executive order.

It's big stuff.

It's a huge deal.

And so in our regularly scheduled June 4th episode, which was released just a bit ago, we briefly covered the original iteration of this executive order, which we termed the executive order that wasn't.

Because the White House had a whole signing ceremony lined up for an AI and cybersecurity focused executive order back on May 21st.

But then the president decided against signing the order on the day of.

But on June 2nd, President Trump went ahead and signed a new updated version of that executive order.

Right.

And the version that was signed on June 2nd is different from the prior version.

And so it's a got a page long, a little over a page.

And so let's just break it down and go through it pretty quickly because it's got some interesting things and then it's got a lot of room for things that we don't yet know what they're going to be, what the regulation might look like, how the interactions will occur.

The order is called Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence innovation and security.

So it's sort of a mouthful.

And the first part is a, you know, a sort of has a statement that the U.S. is really wants to be able to unleash tremendous and already has technological growth and economic investment in AI and doesn't want a lot of regulatory constraints.

But then it goes on and talks about defense.

about the government wanting to lock down various systems, ensure that the country's critical infrastructure against cyber attacks powered by AI are protected.

And then there's the part that's really made the headlines.

And the second half is all about what are called covered frontier models.

And you'll hear that phrase a fair amount today.

And this is a framework where AI developers would voluntarily give the federal government an early look at Models that might be covered frontier models, which would be highly advanced new models before they go public for just a period of 30 days.

And so let's talk about that.

Yeah, but so that second half

about turning over the models for a 30-day period, that's the part of the executive order that led to the original delay in signing, right? Yeah.

Right.