Remember how Trump’s sad indoor 2025 inauguration was mostly attended by the billionaire tech bros who bought him? It’s a pertinent image to keep in mind for this story. As we discussed, Trump recently barfed out a slew of social media posts railing against any and all AI regulations. The timing of the tirade came on the heels of leading AI researchers issuing dire warnings about the need to slow down the pace of this technology, fears that Trump decried as a hoax like climate change. So much, so stupid. But there’s more context to the story, which the Wall Street Journal laid out this week in their article, “Inside the White House Tussle to Sway Trump on AI.” The piece references a proposal made in July by Google Chief Scientist & DeepMind Chair Demis Hassabis, calling for an industry-funded AI oversight body. Hassabis modeled the idea after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the independent group that monitors securities firms. Well, surprise surprise, other tech titans didn’t like the sound of that. WSJ reports that last month, Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Elon Musk (SpaceXAI), and Jensen Huang (Nvidia) each lobbied Trump to block the formation of such an agency. Clearly, it worked.

The billionaires’ purported concern about the proposal stemmed from fears it would entrench more power in the hands of the three leading American AI labs: OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google’s DeepMind.

All three expressed their concerns to Trump in separate conversations, after which the president didn’t move forward with proposals for setting up the regulator.

According to the Journal, administration officials have told top AI executives that building consensus on an AI regulatory framework at the White House is challenging because CEOs opposing such moves are contacting Trump directly.

…On Tuesday, both Zuckerberg and Huang downplayed concerns about AI safety risks and argued that companies can pace themselves without external regulation. Zuckerberg outlined his argument in a lengthy X post, arguing that companies have a “strong natural incentive” to ensure AI is aligned to safety and human interests, as people will not use AI agents that are “misaligned with them and…don’t do what they ask.” Meta’s billionaire CEO also appeared to dismiss the argument that AI companies may need to coordinate to ensure safety, noting that “every lab has the responsibility and incentive to move at the pace required to train its models safely, and the ability to take its own actions to ensure that happens.” Zuckerberg, however, said his company was open to engaging independent evaluators and advisers on AI, agreeing with Anthropic and OpenAI.

…Last week, Musk questioned and mocked a series of viral X posts made by Jacob Coxon, an ex-Anthropic researcher, who quit the company and raised alarm about AI-driven human extinction over the next decade. Musk said the posts seemed like a ‘setup’ and argued that this was a spark that followed “groundwork” for a “psy op (for lack of a better term),” presumably against AI. But when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei issued warnings about AI safety and called for “pacing” the development of frontier AI models and better coordination on safety, Musk wrote, “Dario is right.” However, unlike Anthropic and OpenAI, Musk’s SpaceXAI has not laid out any plans to coordinate or pace frontier AI model development.

[From Forbes]

“The billionaires’ purported concern about the proposal stemmed from fears it would entrench more power in the hands of the three leading American AI labs…” none of which are the companies run by the three concerned billionaires. Musk, Zuck, and Huang are just worried about a company having *too* much power, you guys! And speaking of “that’s rich,” how does Zuckerberg have the NERVE to wax poetic on companies being self-incentivized to ensure the safety of their products/technology?? This from the CEO whose AI glasses are being used to secretly film and harass people (largely women), and whose algorithms have been judged by multiple courts to knowingly put people (largely kids) at risk for impaired mental health and sexual exploitation. I’ll not be taking that man’s word on anything, let alone anything to do with public and personal safety, thankyouverymuch.

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