Has Musk Given Up On AI Regulation? – CleanTechnica

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Several years ago, Elon Musk frequently warned about the dangers of AI technology, raising doomsday scenarios and comparing machine learning technology to nuclear weapons to describe their potential power. But, at the same time, he’s been against certain types of AI regulations, especially those that would place guardrails around hate speech and misinformation. In other words, he’s of the opinion that AI should be controlled to prevent existential risks and not to advance anything he labels “woke” (another word for things he doesn’t personally approve of).

This fairly consistent (even if bifurcated) position doesn’t appear to be shared by the Trump Regime as it stakes out its policy positions. Last week, JD Vance appeared at an international AI summit in France, and came out swinging against most AI regulations, whether aimed at human survival or at “woke” regulations. The biggest fear he expressed is that European regulators seemed to be preparing to strike back at the United States by tightening regulations on the tech companies that project soft U.S. power abroad, and the Trump Regime can’t have that.

Unlike most free market approaches to industry, Vance seemed to advocate for American dominance over the field, unhindered by the actions of other countries. He also warned against cooperation with China, a country that seems to be getting a lot of blame for upending the AI field today. Specifically, he claims that DeepSeek and other Chinese entities stole the technology from the United States and could use it against democratic countries that respect human rights (a group he pretends to be a part of).

What’s strange about this is that Elon usually gets what he wants out of Trump these days. Aside from basically seeing him run roughshod all over the United States government today, we’ve also seen his son say things like “You’re not the president, you need to go away.” to Trump, only to watch him hang his head in shame (something that’s very uncharacteristic of Trump). Whatever is going on behind the scenes, it’s clear that Musk is largely sitting in the driver’s seat.

How This All Might Make Sense

This idea that there’s a free market approach that businessmen prefer and a more regulated approach that socialists and/or safety advocates prefer is really a vast oversimplification. For small business, lower regulatory hurdles and easily understood tax policy is generally a good thing, but when we’re talking about people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, we’re talking about the exact opposite.

Large businesses often prefer more strict regulatory environments because it gives them a great moat against more nimble smaller players. Major corporations can afford armies of lawyers and accountants, and they can deal with regulations effectively. Small businesses and startups generally can’t afford to raise such armies, and end up being shut out of the market.

Zooming out a bit more, companies frequently engage in this kind of corruption with regulators and government in general. They make donations, the politicians they donated to “owe them one,” and then they help them craft regulations that appear to be for the public but really serve the major corpos. Then, they make obscene profits, treat us all as serfs, and manipulate the next election to get even more favors and ill-gotten gain.

My opinion is that Elon Musk wants the United States to dominate AI technology because he now controls the government or is at least a big enough part of it to seriously influence it and benefit from it. While he previously wanted government to help him build a moat for his companies, he’s probably thinking on a larger scale, but still doing what works best for him personally.

Featured image by CleanTechnica.