How Trump Was Persuaded to Regulate A.I.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Michael Barbaro** (0:26)
Hey, it's Michael. Before we start the show, we want to let you know that our colleague, Pulitzer Prize-winning culture critic and host of The Times podcast Cannonball, Wesley Morris, is going to be hosting a live event next week at the Tribeca Festival. Wesley will be talking to the actress and activist Cynthia Nixon. They'll be having a conversation about great works of art about New York, which makes sense given Nixon's starring role in arguably one of them, Sex and the City. It promises to be a very fun and very smart evening. The show is Friday, June 12th at 6 p.m. and you can get your tickets at tribecafilm.com/audio. That's tribecafilm.com/audio.
Okay, here's today's show. For New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.
Today, the story of how President Trump grudgingly accepted that the most transformational technology of our time, artificial intelligence, requires government oversight. My colleague, Tripp Mickle, takes us inside the dramatic White House battle that has played out over the past few weeks and previews the coming fight over just how far federal regulation of AI should go. It's Thursday, June 4th. Tripp, welcome back to The Daily.

**Tripp Mickle** (2:11)
Thanks so much for having me.

**Michael Barbaro** (2:13)
I want you to explain exactly what President Trump did a few days ago on Tuesday.

**Tripp Mickle** (2:19)
On Tuesday morning, as I was in the middle of my commute, I was bombarded with text messages saying that President Trump had, to many people's surprise, an executive order to regulate artificial intelligence. It gives the government, for the first time really, under the Trump administration, oversight over AI models. This is a big change for an administration that has had an entirely hands-off approach to regulating the tech industry and the companies that are pushing artificial intelligence forward.
What the government has done is said that AI companies will share their models voluntarily with the government about 30 days before they're released publicly, so that the government can review the models and figure out if there are any software vulnerabilities that they could attack. Then that would allow the government to patch those vulnerabilities and prevent a cyber attack by a foreign adversary or just a bad actor.

**Michael Barbaro** (3:23)
This seems like a relatively big ask, which is, let us, the government, take a look at your software before the world, before all the businesses that want it get a chance to buy it. What's the story behind why this administration that has been so hands-off, decided at long last that it should be in the business of regulating, artificial intelligence?

**Tripp Mickle** (3:55)
Well, it's been on a journey, and that journey began last year when President Trump came into office, and one of the first things he did was sign an executive order that repealed and scrapped all of the rules from the Biden era, that were designed to bring some safety processes to bear on artificial intelligence. Trump would explain why he did this by saying, We're going to make America great again.

**Donald Trump** (4:21)
We're going to make this industry absolutely the top because right now it's a beautiful baby that's born. We have to grow that baby and let that baby thrive.

**Tripp Mickle** (4:34)
The AI industry is a beautiful baby, and you don't want rules to get in the way of a beautiful baby when it's taking its first steps. You just want it to take its first steps, essentially, and let it start to run.

**Donald Trump** (4:46)
We can't stop it. We can't stop it with politics. We can't stop it with foolish rules and even stupid rules at the same time.

**Tripp Mickle** (4:54)
And that was the administration's philosophy. And that philosophy was really cultivated and encouraged by David Sacks, the White House AIs are. David is a venture capitalist. He's pretty much a libertarian. And he believes that any rules would get in the way of technology's advancement and development. And he wins the president's ear with two arguments.

**David Sacks** (5:20)
If the US continues to lead in AI, we will remain the most powerful country. But if we don't, we could fall behind our global competitors, like China.

**Tripp Mickle** (5:29)
On one hand, the geopolitical competition between superpowers, between the United States and China for who's going to control this technology that clearly has the potential to define the next century.