Rumors suggest that President-elect Donald Trump may appoint an AI czar to oversee America’s artificial intelligence strategy. Axios reports that this role would focus on maintaining U.S. leadership in AI development while leveraging new technologies for government efficiency. Could this position shape the future of AI policy, or will it spark new controversies
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[Music] Rumors are swirling that president-elect Trump is going to name a White House Aisar welcome back to the AI Daily Brief Headlines Edition all the daily AI news You need in around 5 minutes one of the Big things that people are watching Right now is how Presidential Appointments might impact AI policy in The years to come now we have rumors of What might be the most direct position To influence this space with axios Reporting that president-elect Donald Trump is considering naming an aiar this Is coming from sources in inside the Trump transition team and the way that They framed it to axios is that the role Is likely but not certain in terms of The details they are of course sparse Sources suggest that this won't be Elon Musk himself but that he along with f Ramaswami the two who are of course Leading the new Department of government Efficiency or Doge will have a big role In determining who is the aiar that is Somewhat concerning for other Tech Leaders with whom Elon has a touchy Relationship interestingly this is not The only Zar being considered for the Trump White House Bloomberg reported Last week that the Trump transition team Had also been vetting cryptocurrency Executives for a similar role for the Crypto industry there is also a
Possibility say the sources that the AI And crypto roles could be combined under A single emerging Technologies are I for One am hugely hoping that that doesn't Happen I think that these spaces while Having a relationship with one another And while I'd love to see those two Zars Work in close concert with one another Are fundamentally different and require Different things and I'd like to see That them get their own consideration in Terms of what the aisar will do axio Says the aisar will be charged with Focusing both public and private Resources to keep America in the AI Forefront something that was established Under President Biden's AI executive Order and which might be kept even Though Trump plans to repeal that order Is that government agencies have all Named chief AI officers theoretically The White House aiar could play a Coordination role across all of those Individuals another potential area of Activity we've discussed how Doge the Department of government offici Might not only be focused on trying to Find obvious waste but also think about How new AI enabled processes could make Things more efficient reports speculate That both of those functions could be Supported by this aiar in other words Using AI to root Out quote waste Fraud And Abuse but also thinking about how AI
Could reshape processes going forward it Also seems likely that if this role is Established they will have to be closely Connected to energy policy given that One of the big constraints for future Leadership is going to be the Availability of energy and axios notes That an aisar would not require Senate Consent allowing the person to get to Work much more quickly speculation has Of course started ramping up one of the Names thrown around for example is Max Tegmark who's an MIT professor and AI Safety Advocate and who some have Reported has been influential in shaping Trump's views on controlled AI Development but then again all of that Is just speculation the more interesting Thing here is that tegmark is a reminder Of how much this role could shape the Way the US approaches things the Difference between someone who is Accelerationist minded versus Safety-minded could be enormous when it Comes to how different policy is pursued And so if this is a real thing it is Going to be worth following very Closely in the meantime politicians Continue jockeying to make AI policy the Latest comes from Senator Peter Welch Who has introduced a new bill aimed at Making copyright enforcement easier when It comes to AI model training called the Transparency and responsibility for
Artificial intelligence networks or Train Act The bill theoretically increases Transparency into data sets copyright Holders would be able to subpoena the Training records of AI models if they Have a good faith their belief was used To work to train the model developers Would only need to reveal training Material to the extent that it is quote Sufficient to identify with certainty Whether copyrighted Works were used Failure to produce would create a legal Presumption that the AI developer did in Fact use the copyrighted material in Question Welsh said that the country Needs to quote set a higher standard for Transparency around AI training adding This is simple if work is used to train AI there should be a way for you the Copyright holder to determine that it's Been used by a training model and you Should get compensated if it was we need To give America's musicians artists and Creators a tool to find out when AI Companies are using their work to train Models without artist permission so far Attempts to sue AI labs around copyright Infringement have been progressing at a Fairly slow pace the New York Times Lawsuit against open AI is probably the Most advanced in that case the judge Ordered openai to produce a searchable Version of their training data for New
York Times attorneys to scour through we Don't know whether they' found anything At this stage but the process was marked By controversy when open aai Accidentally deleted search log setting The process back this law is aimed at Streamlining some similar process but The concern of course is that it swings Too far in the other direction we don't Have right now solid legal precedent on Whether using data to train AI models Constitutes copyright infringement many Labs have been signing licensing Agreements in order to avoid lawsuits And the associated PR damage but no Court has had an opportunity to make a Ruling on this point of law this bill Also doesn't settle the question of law It simply introduces a clearer subpoena Power when copyright infringement is Alleged meanwhile jurisdictions like Israel Japan and Singapore have created Laws that classify training data as fair Use a16z and others in the AI industry Have likened use in training data as Closer to reading a book than copying a Book ultimately this is going to be one Of the most challenging balancing acts That we Face protecting authors Musicians and creatives on the one hand While advancing strategic AI on the Other moving back to the technical side Of things anthropic has launched a new Tool for connecting AI assistant to
External data sources called the model Context protocol or mCP anthropic are Proposing it as an open source standard For data connectivity mCP allows any Model not just once produced by Anthropic to draw data from business Tools and software or content Repositories they wrote in a blog post As AI assistants gain mainstream Adoption the industry has invested Heavily in model capabilities achieving Rapid advances in reasoning and quality Yet even the most sophisticated models Are constrained by their isolation from Data trapped behind information silos And Legacy systems every new data source Requires its own custom implementation Making truly connected systems difficult To scale Alex Albert the head of cloud Relations provided a series of examples Of mCP being used to connect to GitHub And a generic search engine to Demonstrate its flexibility he wrote We're building a world where AI connects To any data source through a single Elegant protocol mCP is the universal Translator integrate mCP once into your Client and connect to data sources Anywhere get started with mCP in less Than 5 minutes we built servers for GitHub slack SQL databases local files Search engines and more like LSP did for Idees we're building mCP as an open Standard for llm Integrations build your
Own servers contribute to the protocol And help shape the future of AI Integrations even if that sounds like Greek to you what's important to know is That open connectivity standards have a Long history of being a powerful unlock Once they reach Mass adoption even Something we take for granted like the Standard USB port used to be dozens of Different proprietary variants that were All incompatible it's unclear whether Open Ai and other Frontier Labs will Adopt an open standard but block Apollo Repet codium and sourcc are all building MCP support into their platforms Anthropic have also shared pre-built mCP Servers for Google Drive slack and GitHub the company wrote instead of Maintaining separate connectors for each Data source developers can now build Against a standard protocol as the Ecosystem matures AI systems will Maintain context as they move between Different tools and data sets replacing Today's fragmented Integrations with a More sustainable Architecture what I think is relevant Here is that it's so telling about where We are as an industry so much of what's Actually exciting right now is not big Huge advances in model capabilities it's These fundamental infrastructure Building blocks that are coming online That in a few years or even a few months
It will be very hard to imagine a time Before them they're going to unlock a Huge number of use cases and New Opportunities and so as small as they Might seem relative to getting Orion or GPT 5 this is I think very big news Indeed for now that that's going to do It for today's AI da brief headlines Edition Next up the main episode