Trump: We're Banning 'Wokeness' From AI Models

President Trump unveiled an "A.I. Action Plan" and signed three related executive orders on Wednesday intended to make the US a leader in artificial intelligence, reports the Guardian. By and large, the White House is giving a green light to tech companies to advance the technology by removing what it calls "red tape and onerous regulation," per the New York Times. Two of the executive orders, for example, focus on making it easier to build AI data centers and to export American AI products. The third executive order, however, contains what Axios calls a potential "time bomb" for companies—a ban on "wokeness" in AI chatbots.

• "Once and for all, we are getting rid of woke. Is that OK?" Trump told an audience of industry leaders. "The American people do not want woke Marxist lunacy in the AI models." Trump said former President Biden had "established toxic diversity, equity and inclusion ideology as a guiding principle of American AI development."
• The problem is that defining what's "woke" can be a subjective matter. The mandate "poses thorny technical challenges and raises questions about who decides what counts as an acceptable answer," per Axios.
• The Guardian has a similar take: "The metrics of what make an AI model politically biased are contentious and open to interpretation, however, and therefore may allow the administration to use the order to target companies at its discretion." It's a worry also voiced by the Center for Democracy and Technology: "Demanding that developers refrain from 'ideological bias' or be 'neutral' in their models is an impossible, vague standard that the administration will be able to weaponize for its own ideological ends."