Trump Signs Executive Order For AI Testing Prior To Frontier Model Releases

Last week we were expecting an Executive Order on Thursday. Then Trump cancelled it, and said he wouldn’t sign it because he was worried it would be too burdensome. Then, with one change, he went ahead and signed it on Tuesday anyway. The Overton Window has shifted. Nothing was not really a viable option anymore. The Previously Dead Executive Order For several days, we thought that David Sacks, together with others like Elon Musk, had successfully lobbied to kill the Executive Order. The ‘My Offer Is Nothing’ faction looked to have won. Word on the street was the order was essentially dead. Dean Ball and Daniel Kokotajlo agreed, with the Executive Order looking dead, that the particular regime in the Executive Order is likely worse than nothing. This is plausible, given it did not exactly involve a lot of deliberate thought. Nothing, however, was clearly not going to cut it. We are facing, and will increasingly face, calls for action to regulate AI. Representative Lori Trahan: There’s no federal law on the books governing how the most powerful AI systems in the world are built, tested or deployed. No independent auditors verify their safety claims. No federal agency has clear authority to step in when something goes wrong. Congress must act now on AI. Representative Lori Trahan: First, real accountability at the frontier. The largest AI companies should be required to publish and comply with safety and security frameworks. They should have to submit to third-party audits to show their work, and federal and state regulators should be empowered to enforce and update those requirements as the technology evolves. The most powerful labs also should not be allowed to silence whistleblowers who want to expose wrongdoing. The companies building models that could reshape our future should not be operating on the honor system. Second, independent verification of safety practices. The federal government cannot verify every AI model itself, nor should it try. Instead, it can ac