Trump Hopes to Kill ‘Woke’ AI Models
President Trump is working on an executive order that targets so-called “woke” artificial intelligence (AI) models.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the White House is writing an executive order that will force any technology companies that receive federal contracts to be “politically neutral and unbiased,” as WSJ describes. The publication’s sources indicate that the Trump administration aims to address AI models that it believes are overly liberal, although the exact meaning of this is unclear.
“Woke” AI models are a frequent topic of discussion among conservatives. In early 2024, Google’s Gemini AI model was criticized by some for being “anti-white” after it generated historically inaccurate images, including a black George Washington and, although it’s unclear why it matters, Nazi soldiers who were too diverse.
The allegedly liberal leanings of AI models have rubbed some in the President’s orbit the wrong way, including “AI Czar” David Sacks and the White House’s senior policy adviser for AI, Sriram Krishnan, who WSJ reports are the key writers of the new executive order on AI.
While it may seem like the executive order is narrow in scope, applying only to AI and tech companies with federal contracts, nearly every tech company is trying to secure federal money in one way or another, and winning contracts requires staying on the administration’s good side.
Many companies have worked hard to make their AI models inclusive and, at least in some part, counteract centuries of erasure of various minority groups. However, if the reported executive order is signed, this is likely to change, and companies will take measures to remove any intentional diversity initiatives from their AI models.
However, not all “wokeness” is due to any human input at the training level or output programming. AI models are prone to entirely inexplicable errors, so pinpointing which models are “woke” and which are just stupid will be a tall task.
Beyond political motivations, removing guardrails from AI models has also been purported to offer economic benefits. President Trump wants the U.S. to win the AI arms race against China, and it is the belief within the White House that doing so will require AI companies to spend less time worrying about their models being inclusive and more time focusing on making them faster.
The reported executive order will also set the stage for some AI models to be much more attractive to the federal government, including Elon Musk’s xAI. As WSJ notes, xAI’s Grok chatbot has been on something of an antisemitic tear lately, which could roil a Trump administration closely allied with Israel, but Musk’s xAI is built on being “anti-woke,” so he has that going for him despite public feuding with the President.
It remains to be seen how an executive order targeting “woke” AI will impact the many companies that have made reducing bias and removing harmful content priorities with their AI models, including Adobe, Google, and OpenAI. A significant amount of government money is at stake, and AI companies will need to care a lot less about whether their AI models are harmful to get a piece of the pie.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
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