Breaking Down the Master Plan
Artificial intelligence is all the rage in Washington again. The Trump administration is rolling out a sprawling, 28-page master plan called Winning the Race: America’s AI Action Plan. It’s a hefty manifesto that includes more than 90 policy recommendations and three executive orders. The goals? Innovate faster than China. Build data centers by the dozen. Perhaps most eyebrow-raising: root out all that “woke” nonsense from the algorithms.
To help you with this bold and wide-ranging blueprint, we’re providing a brisk tour, slicing through the red tape and jargon.
Executive AI Highlights (in Digestible Bullets)
- Accelerate Innovation: Deregulate, subsidize, and let Silicon Valley run wild—unless it gets too “woke.”
- Build AI Infrastructure: Clear federal land, streamline permits for megawatt-hungry data centers, and offer financial carrots for semiconductor expansion.
- Global AI Dominance: Export “full-stack” American AI to allies, with hardware, chips, and a reminder: only trust U.S. tech, please.
- Ideological Bias Blackout: Federal AI must “seek truth” and “serve objectivity.” It allows no room for “misinformation.” DEI or climate talk is not permissible in government models.
- Regulatory Chilling: States that go overboard regulating AI risk losing federal funds. Bureaucracy is the enemy, not hallucinating chatbots.
- Copyright? Shhhh: The plan is conspicuously silent on demands for tech companies to pay for the oceans of copyrighted content devoured by their ever-hungrier algorithms.
The Copyright “Burden”: If You Feed a Model a Book…
It is one thing to race ahead on the digital autobahn; quite another to pretend the speed limit doesn’t exist.
Artists, journalists, and publishers have repeatedly sounded alarms about abuses of their creations in the name of training AI. In an “unscripted” turn, President Trump made a bold statement: requiring AI companies to pay for all copyrighted content was simply “not doable.” Such a requirement would hobble American companies in the global arena.
So, while the official plan tiptoes around the legal debate, Trump delivered the subtext: AI should learn like people do. This means “reading” without being sent an invoice for every newspaper, book, or playlist. Disregard the long-standing tradition of copyright as the engine of American ingenuity. For AI, knowledge is apparently free-range. The bill goes unmailed.
Expect tech giants to rest easy, smaller creators to bristle, and copyright lawyers to clear their calendars for years of wrangling.
Targeting “Woke” AI: Neutrality, Redefined
With a dramatic flourish, Trump signed an executive order. It bars federal agencies from procuring AI models that “sacrifice truthfulness and accuracy to ideological agendas.”
No “woke Marxist lunacy” (Trump’s words, not ours) is to be permitted in federally-contracted models. All mentions of “misinformation,” “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” and “climate change” are to be removed from federal risk management frameworks. To enforce this, only providers guaranteeing “objectivity” and “truth” will be considered for lucrative contracts.
How the government plans to ensure large language models stay “objective” is unclear. It seems to rely more on hope rather than clear rules. Critics say this just swaps one type of bias (like discrimination) for another. Depending on your view, this feels less like fair regulation and more like confusing flip-flopping.
Closing Byte: Exporting Innovation, Importing Confusion
America is about to flood the world with its “gold standard” AI. This global technology stack, born in Silicon Valley, will operate with less federal or copyright oversight. Whether it delivers truly objective knowledge or simply recycles old biases with more confidence remains to be seen.
We are entering a bold new era for American AI. It will be fueled by computing power, executive orders, and a contradictory mix of unfiltered truth alongside carefully controlled ideology.
Sources:
For more insights about what AI can or cannot do, check out my book “Artificial Stupelligence: The Hilarious Truth About AI”.
