Trump postpones signing of AI safety executive order

The executive order would have given the US government authority to evaluate and identify security vulnerabilities in AI models.

An executive order that US President Donald Trump was supposed to sign to boost government AI security and safety oversight has been postponed. Trump said the reason is because he “didn’t like certain aspects of it.”

The postponing of the AI safety executive order was announced by the Trump administration earlier today, as reported by Axios. With the US allegedly ahead of China and the rest of the world in AI technology development and deployment, Trump told reporters, “I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that lead.” He added that he believes AI is “causing tremendous good,” and that the executive order “could have been a blocker” to that progress.

Many of the biggest tech companies reported strong quarters in the AI business, particularly Microsoft, Apple, and NVIDIA. Trump arguably has direct reason to stay out of their way, considering it was revealed that he bought stocks in all of those companies and more. While that might be considered a conflict of interest, no effective action has been taken at this point to keep it from happening, or to keep Trump from acting with that investment in mind.

As it stands while the federal Center for AI Standards and Innovation announced it has agreements with Google DeepMind, Microsoft, and Elon Musk’s xAI to let it evaluate AI models before they are made publicly available, but the postponing of today’s executive order could be a barrier to the center’s ability to enforce those agreements. As we watch for more updates, stay tuned to the AI topic.

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