On his first day in office, Trump slashed a total of 90 Biden executive orders he described as “harmful” spanning everything from pandemic relief to climate change, with the order on 'Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of AI' among the victims.
Attempting to access Biden's AI Executive Order on newly Trumpified White House website now presents an error message.
President Trump said the revocations are just the start of what he said would be “many steps” his second administration would take to “repair our institutions and our economy”.
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Biden’s AI order, issued in October 2023, instructed federal agencies to create standards to ensure the AI tools they’re using are safe to use.
Agencies like the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Energy would have been required to put in place an official to oversee their responsible use of AI.
The Commerce Department would have also provided guidance on authenticating AI-generated content through means like watermarking. Federal agencies would then have used these authentication tools to provide citizens with assurances that a message from the government is real.
Away from federal agencies, the order forced developers of top-tier AI models like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Inflection AI to share information with the government on model training and security mechanisms of their next-gen systems.
Repealing the AI order sat at the top of Trump’s technology-related agenda, previously decrying it as “impos[ing] radical left-wing ideas on the development" of AI technologies.
In its place, Trump previously said he would instead support AI development “rooted in free speech and human flourishing”.
Such a pledge was likely welcomed by close Trump ally, ‘Department’ of Government Efficiency (DOGE) lead, and self-proclaimed free speech absolutist Elon Musk, whose xAI startup is building Grok AI models designed to be more nuanced in its responses than rival ChatGPT.
Musk will now lead DOGE alone after co-lead Vivek Ramaswamy departed to run for governor in Ohio.
Minutes after Trump was sworn in this week, Musk and DOGE were hit with a lawsuit challenging the legalities of the advisory group, claiming it violates federal transparency rules related to practices around hiring and disclosures.
Despite having 'department' in its name, DOGE is not an official government department. If it were, Musk and the now departed Ramaswamy would be required to disclose assets under rules that apply to federal employees to avoid potential conflicts of interest.
Trump did leave one of President Biden's last Executive Orders intact, which instructed government agencies to make federal-owned sites ready for new AI data centres and clean power facilities.
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