From WIRED · Hugo Lowell · · 1m 50s
Washington won't regulate AI anytime soon
Trump killed a proposed AI oversight agency, Congress is gridlocked, and tech executives are blocking most proposals.
In brief
Trump killed a proposed AI oversight agency, Congress is gridlocked, and tech executives are blocking most proposals. Despite mounting concerns about frontier AI risks, the US government has no serious regulatory plans in motion and faces political obstacles that make action unlikely in the near term. Originally…
Trump killed the AI oversight plan
The White House was developing a FINRA-style regulatory body for AI labs, but Trump soured on the idea after tech executives including David Sacks and Mark Zuckerberg called to oppose it in August.
Trump calls AI safety a hoax
Trump has rejected any overt regulation and called AI safety concerns a hoax on Truth Social, partly in response to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's essay on frontier AI dangers.
Congress has competing bills with no votes
Several AI bills exist in Congress, but with no voting days left before midterm elections and no unified support, passage is extraordinarily unlikely.
The Frontier Act has the most support
The bipartisan Frontier Act, introduced by House Democrat Lori Trahan and Republican Jay Obernolte, would embed auditors at AI labs to report safety incidents. OpenAI backs it, but Speaker Mike Johnson won't bring it to the floor.
China concerns block the auditor idea
Critics worry that if auditors force a model offline, China won't pause development, creating pressure to lift emergency pauses to stay competitive. This defeats the purpose of having auditors.
Kill-switch bills lack tech support
Two competing kill-switch proposals would let the government shut down AI models, but tech executives are skeptical. They argue kill switches can't stop damage already done by unobserved models.
No serious plans on the horizon
Despite widespread talk of AI regulation, there are no new oversight proposals seriously under consideration at the White House, and Congress faces insurmountable obstacles to passing anything.
The main idea
Despite mounting concerns about frontier AI risks, the US government has no serious regulatory plans in motion and faces political obstacles that make action unlikely in the near term.
