Will This OpenAI Update Make AI Agents Work Better?

**Nathaniel Whittemore** (0:00)
Today on The AI Daily Brief, why OpenAI are adopting the skills mechanism and how it could improve agents. Before that in the headlines, the fallout from the latest White House executive order on AI. The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI.
Welcome back to the AI Daily Brief Headlines edition, all the daily AI news you need in around five minutes. Last week, after a lot of behind the scenes discourse, some of which spilled into very public acrimony, President Trump signed a highly contentious order attempting to block states from passing their own AI regulations. Now, this is one of those classic debates that's about a hundred things at once. To take the administration at face value, this is about creating a single federal rule book as a necessary step to ensuring the US can win the AI race. But then of course, underneath that, there are issues of the power relationship between the federal government and states. That's one that's been big here in the US for the last 250 years or so. And there's also the sub story of the GOP fracturing around Trump's alliance with AI technology companies. A draft of the order had circulated in late November, sparking outrage on both sides of the aisle. The executive order that ended up passing on Thursday was substantively identical to the draft. That included the controversial measure of establishing a dedicated task force within the DOJ to start a campaign of litigation against states with their own AI laws. The order also instructed the Commerce Department to withhold federal broadband funding from states that had, in the words of the EO, onerous AI laws. There are three big issues that the EO brings up when it comes to state-level regulations. First they said by definition it creates a patchwork of 50 different regulatory regimes that makes compliance especially for startups particularly challenging. Second the White House claims quote, state laws are increasingly responsible for requiring entities to embed ideological bias within models. Third they say state laws sometimes impermissibly regulate beyond state borders impinging on interstate commerce. Now of course the Democratic side of the aisle immediately had a lot to say about this. Scott Weiner who has been extensively involved in state AI legislation in California said, It's absurd for Trump to think he can weaponize the DOJ and commerce to undermine those state rights. If the Trump administration tries to enforce this ridiculous order we will see them in court. Federal Senator Brian Schatz has already sponsored a bill that would overturn the order. Schatz drew on the criticism that this order blocks state law and replaces it with nothing, commenting, Congress has a responsibility to get this technology right and quickly, but states must be allowed to act in the public interest in the meantime. Now, as I mentioned before, the order also triggered infighting for Republicans who are worried that AI will be a losing issue in the midterms. Writes the Washington Post, Populist forces within the Republican Party mounted an extensive campaign to derail the action after a draft of the order leaked last month, arguing that fears over AI's potential to automate jobs would undermine the party's message to workers.
Now, the Post said a handful of tech leaders neutralized those fears for now, convincing the president, a long-time real estate developer, that burdensome regulation could cripple the industry. White House AISR David Sacks did take to Twitter slash X to have some conciliatory words on at least a few of the concerns from the right. He called them the four Cs, child safety, communities, creators and censorship. On child safety, he said preemption would not apply to generally applicable state laws. So state laws requiring online platforms to protect children from online predators or sexually explicit material would remain in effect. On communities, he said AI preemption would not apply to local infrastructure. In short, preemption would not force communities to host data centers they don't want. On creators, he said copyright law is already federal, so there is no need for preemption here. Questions about how copyright law should be applied to AI are already playing out in the courts. That's where this issue will be decided. And on censorship, he claimed, As mentioned, the biggest threat of censorship is coming from certain blue states. Red states can't stop this. Only President Trump's leadership at the federal level can. Still, it does not seem all is resolved when it comes to AI politics on the right. The Post describes a quote simmering rift between the populace and tech factions of the Republican Party, with one source saying, It feels like millions of votes across the country just got traded for thousands of VCs and tech rich votes in regions Republicans will never win. Now moving over to another recent move. Last week, the president announced that Nvidia's previous generation H200 ships would be approved for export. The first time that unmodified Western versions of the ships had been approved in over three years. That news was immediately followed by reports that Beijing was meeting with tech firms and considering how tightly to restrict access. Basically the strategic consideration for China is how much to allow in these new chips, which could accelerate the output of their labs, versus to continue to focus on their domestic chip industry, which while potentially slowing down those outputs in the short term, could create long term resilience and independence. Speaking with Bloomberg on Friday, AISR David Sacks said, China is rejecting our chips. Apparently they don't want them. And I think the reason for that is they want semiconductor independence. Now he cited Financial Times reporting here rather than inside communications. Still the comments highlight that the chip strategy may be too late. The logic of granting access to H200 was largely that the US needs to get ahead of China developing their own advanced chips. And if Nvidia can't flood China with their chips, then that sort of puts the strategy in jeopardy.