AINot Regulation. Not Even Oversight. Trump’s AI Order Won’t Be Enough
After a bruising tussle inside his administration, President Donald Trump has gone for a decidedly non-committal approach to AI safety and security that’s unlikely to survive sustained contact with reality.
After a bruising tussle inside his administration, President Donald Trump has gone for a decidedly non-committal approach to AI safety and security that’s unlikely to survive sustained contact with reality.
He issued an executive order on 2 June asking artificial intelligence companies to share their most powerful new models voluntarily with the government for up to 30 days before they are released more widely. Officials had been debating this vigorously for months.
The order won’t be enough. It’s being described widely as a reversal by a previously anti-regulation administration. But it shouldn’t be mistaken for regulation or oversight, as some headlines say. It does not state the US government will check new models to ensure they are safe and don’t pose unacceptable security risks before they are released further.
Rather, it’s primarily about giving US government agencies as trusted defenders early access so they can figure out their own responses – including, presumably, how they might use it themselves against adversaries. They’d be silly not to. It will give the good guys – hopefully including Australia’s own cyber defenders as Five Eyes partners and allies – time to prepare against threats.
But don’t mistake it for a vetting regime – even a voluntary one. Indeed the order merely sets expectations on the industry that they take the same attitude that Anthropic took with its Mythos model, holding it back because of its formidable cyber capabilities and sharing it quickly with the US government. That’s fine if all future models remain roughly like Mythos, but they won’t. The next frontier models may be good for making bioweapons, or for finding whole new categories of software vulnerabilities that make Mythos look like Windows XP.
What happens when a model is actually too powerful and therefore too dangerous to release, and there are no safeguards or mitigations that can remedy that risk in any reasonable timeframe? The voluntary framework in Trump’s order imposes no obligation on the developer whatever the danger.
In fact there is no verb at all to describe what the government will do during the 30 days it has exclusive access to a new model. It doesn’t mention ‘review’, ‘assess’ or ‘oversee’, much less ‘vet’. In fact, it specifically says it’s not about ‘mandatory governmental licensing, preclearance, or permitting requirement’ of new models.
