This Week in AI: Trump Repeals Biden AI Rules but Launches Stargate

As expected, President Donal Trump this week signed an executive order rolling back former President Joe Biden’s 2023 artificial intelligence (AI) rules, which had been the country’s most comprehensive set of policies overseeing its advances.

Biden ordered the federal government to scrutinize powerful AI models before they are released to the public, create chief AI officers at federal agencies and develop AI-related security guidelines to enhance cybersecurity, among other stipulations.

However, Trump thus far has left Biden’s other AI-related orders unchanged. He did not revise Biden’s policy restricting exports of advanced AI chips — principally affecting Nvidia’s chips — to nations like China that could use them to beef up its own military’s technical prowess. In his last days in office, Biden expanded his chip export controls, essentially carving out the haves and have nots among more than 120 countries.

Trump also has not weighed in on Biden’s last-minute executive order on using AI to make the nation’s defensive cybersecurity capabilities more robust. He also didn’t change Biden’s recent executive order letting companies lease federal land for the building of AI data centers, whose computing power is necessary to keep powering AI advances.

Stargate’s $500 Billion Drama

Trump did announce an up-to-$500 billion project called Stargate, which aims to build big AI-focused data centers in the U.S. The first 10 data centers are being constructed in Texas, later to be expanded to 20. The first 500,000-square foot data center is being built in Abilene, Texas, about 180 miles west of Dallas, according to Oracle Executive Chairman Larry Ellison.

Equity partners in Stargate are SoftBank, which will be responsible for funding the venture, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX, an AI-focused sovereign wealth fund in Dubai. OpenAI co-leads the venture with SoftBank; it will have operational responsibility for the project. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son will chair Stargate. Oracle, Arm, Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI will be the project’s initial technology partners.

But Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk injected drama into the announcement, posting on X that “they don’t actually have the money.” He also said SoftBank has “well under $10B secured. I have that on good authority,” but without elaborating.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded by saying Musk is “wrong, as you surely know.” After inviting Musk to visit the first data center site, Altman said, “I realize what is great for the country isn’t always what’s optimal for your companies, but in your new role I hope you’ll mostly put (America) first.”

Asked about Stargate, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told CNBC that “we’re good for $80 billion,” even though the software giant is not officially responsible for funding the project. Nadella said Microsoft spends $80 billion in capital expenditures yearly and has its own plans for Azure data centers.

AI’s Future in Healthcare

This week was the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, where titans of industry met with heads of state to discuss the pressing issues of the day. AI was a focus of the event, especially as it relates to advances in healthcare that can start to bridge the level of care available to citizens of both developed and emerging countries, according to panelists.

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said AI-designed drugs are coming to clinical trials this year, during a fireside chat at the event. Hassabis won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for his role in developing AlphaFold2, which can predict the 3D structure of every known protein, solving a half-century biology challenge. These drugs fall under the auspices of Google’s Isomorphic Labs, which Hassabis leads.

In another panel, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said he believes that AI-powered advances in biology can lead to doubling the human lifespan. He called this the “grand vision.” He said that if AI today can shrink a century’s worth of work in biology to five to 10 years, and if one believes it would take 100 years to double the average length of human life, then “a doubling of the human lifespan is not at all crazy, and if AI is able to accelerate that we may be able to get that in five to 10 years.”

Amodei also said his startup is working on the “virtual collaborator,” which is a high-level AI agent that can interact with other employees, and do tasks like use Slack chat, open Google docs and the like. Managers can check in from time to time with this AI agent, just like they would human employees.  Meanwhile, he predicted that by 2026 or 2027, AI systems will be developed that will be smarter than nearly all humans in doing nearly all tasks.

OpenAI Unveils AI Agent, ‘Operator’

OpenAI took the wraps off its long-rumored AI agent, Operator, which can use a computer like a human, even using a cursor and keyboard. It is able to interpret screenshots and interact with graphic user interfaces (such as buttons, menus and text fields) on the computer screen.

Through a browser, users can ask Operator to do things like order groceries, book reservations and buy event tickets, among other tasks. OpenAI noted that users will still have to approve sensitive transactions, such as making purchases, doing financial transactions and sending emails.

“This represents an important step towards a future where ChatGPT is not only capable of answering questions, but can take actions on a user’s behalf,” according to OpenAI’s system card on Operator. However, OpenAI also warned of risks that include malicious instructions from third-party websites could mislead the model or let it do harmful or banned tasks, as well as ChatGPT making mistakes that might be hard to reverse.

A preview of Operator is available initially to U.S. ChatGPT Pro users. It will be available to ChatGPT Plus users in a few months.