Who gets to regulate AI?

**Rahul Tandon** (0:01)
How do we regulate AI.?

**Joe Millet** (0:04)
What role the government should play in essentially gatekeeping to make sure that these things are only released once good actors have had a chance to look at them?

**Rahul Tandon** (0:14)
It's World Business Report from the BBC World Service. I'm Rahul Tandon. President Trump finally signs an executive order on AI. We'll tell you what that means for the tech giants, and we look at the cost of climate change for businesses.
It is, of course, one of the big social and economic questions of our time. Who and how are we going to regulate? AI is beginning to have such an impact in all our lives. And we've got a bit of an answer in the last few hours.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:53)
Now to breaking news and sticking with the topic of AI. President Trump just signed an executive order this morning centered on government access to advanced artificial intelligence.

**Rahul Tandon** (1:03)
Okay, so that executive order has been signed. What does it mean? Why has he done it now? Because he was supposed to sign it a few weeks ago. Let's answer some of those questions. Joe Millett is a correspondent for the Financial Times in Washington, who focuses on technology and industrial policy.

**Joe Millet** (1:21)
And this was almost at the finish line last month and then was canceled. And the reason for that is that it has been sustained infighting within the Trump administration over the scope of this order and over how much control the government should have when it comes to reviewing these frontier models before they're released. And of course, the background to this is that the government has had a look at a new model by Anthropic called Mythos, which scared a lot of people because of its capabilities to detect and even exploit cybersecurity loopholes.

**Rahul Tandon** (1:55)
It's important to say that this order is voluntary. Here's Joe once again.

**Joe Millet** (2:01)
The order signed today has crunched that to 30 days, so significantly shorter. And we've had a Trump advisor say that this will essentially mean that there won't be any delay for any meaningful delay for these frontier models to be released to the public, that 30 days was enough time to essentially continue with the commercial timelines and comply with this order.

**Rahul Tandon** (2:25)
Okay, plenty to discuss then, and we are joined by Silicon Valley, or from Silicon Valley, the Californian tech investor, Kristy Pitts, and also George Conboy, Chairman of Brighton Securities in New York. Kristy, can I come to you first? So what we know about this executive order is that if we get new AI models and a voluntary arrangement, those big companies will have to give it to the government 30 days in advance to have a look at.
What do you make of that? Because we need some sort of regulation, don't we? Do you think you and the tech companies will be happy with this?

**Kristy Pitts** (3:02)
Yes. Thank you for asking. So I do think that the tech companies are receiving this new executive order favorably. And primarily that's because it is voluntary. And it does, as previously mentioned, the timeframe for review is 30 days. So that is much shorter than what was previously put forth.
Actually, since the executive order was announced, both OpenAI and Microsoft have commented and provided, I would say, neutral to positive commentary. So the business world does seem to be in support of this. And likely that's because the order doesn't have that mandatory requirement.

**Rahul Tandon** (3:40)
George, just looking at the markets, they don't seem to be too bothered about it at all. Do they record highs again? Do they all driven by AI and those tech firms?

**George Conboy** (3:51)
Right, we're still in the AI trade, Rahul, and the voluntary aspect of the executive order seems not to bother anybody. It's not going to change a thing, I think.

**Rahul Tandon** (4:01)
And that is the interesting thing for both of you. George, if you want to go first, and then Chris, if you want to pick up. Because it's voluntary, does that mean, does it actually mean anything then, George?

**George Conboy** (4:11)
It might not, but I think that the tech industry is likely to comply, just to play nice. Because they're not being compelled, nobody's got a gun to their head, sure, we'll play nice with you. There's no reason not to.

**Rahul Tandon** (4:25)
Is that what you think, Christy?

**Kristy Pitts** (4:27)
Yes, also we've seen in the past with the situation with Anthropic and the Department of Defense, that the Trump administration is willing to act in new ways against private companies. And so while the order is voluntary, I think that that's why you're seeing these reactions from OpenAI and Microsoft, that they are complementary of it. And I think these companies probably do intend to comply with it, because there could be negative ramifications if they don't, even though it's not necessarily related to the order.