Donald Trump seems to think that we need to do everything we can to strengthen US leadership in artificial intelligence (AI). At the Republican Party convention on July 19, the presidential candidate referred to this technology in a passage of his speech devoted to the "new golden age" he hopes to bring about – and which "all other countries," including China and Japan, are also seeking to achieve. "We have to produce massive amounts of energy (...). But AI needs tremendous – literally, twice the electricity that's available now in our country, can you imagine?" he warned, without mentioning the environmental consequences of such an energy boom.
For the former US president, AI development seems primarily to involve the deregulation of the sector. The Republican Party platform therefore promises to "repeal Joe Biden's dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology."
Adopted in October 2023, this presidential text aimed to "protect Americans from the potential risks of AI systems" by requiring, under the supervision of federal agencies, software manufacturers to conduct tests to ensure that they are "safe, secure and trustworthy," to avoid breaches of national security, cyber-attacks, but also manipulation or algorithmic bias and discrimination.
At a recent hearing on AI and privacy, Senator J. D. Vance, Trump's vice presidential pick, extended this hostility to AI regulation: "Very often CEOs, especially of larger technology companies that I think already have advantageous positions in AI will come and talk about the terrible safety dangers of this new technology and how Congress needs to jump up and regulate as quickly as possible. And I can't help but worry that if we do something under duress from the current incumbents, it's going to be to the advantage of those incumbents and not to the advantage of the American consumer."
On X, he added that, in his opinion, "a partisan group of crazy people use AI to infect every part of the information economy with left-wing bias." This argument is reminiscent of Trump's criticism of social media and joins Elon Musk's attacks on OpenAI or Google, accused of censoring free speech through moderation measures put in place to prevent their chatbots from broadcasting discriminatory responses or hate speech. The Tesla and X boss, now a Trump supporter and generous donor, launched GrokAI with the idea of it being, in contrast, an "anti-woke" chatbot.
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