Tech CEOs, Trump Administration Ask G-20 to Adopt Pro-AI Policies

Ah, marvellous. The global technocracy has decided to take its case to the G20, with the Trump administration in tow, to demand that regulation be kept to a "minimum" lest it strangle an industry that promises to supercharge global growth and cure diseases. Sam Altman, Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk all fronted up together — a reunion that must have taken real mediation — to tell policymakers that what stands between humanity and those promised breakthroughs is a few too many footnotes in a draft AI law. One almost expects a group hug followed by a call for a global deregulatory frenzy in the name of public health.

Nobody should be fooled. This is less about curing disease than about making sure nobody cures the business model before the next funding round. The same executives who occasionally intone about existential risk when they need an excuse for closed weights are now petitioning heads of state to ease off on the brakes. It's a charming spectacle, like a bank robber asking the police to stand a little further from the door so he can get to his car faster. And the G20 is the perfect audience: a body with enough horsepower to shape global rules but with all the decisive urgency of a committee deciding which biscuits to serve.

The ask to "adopt pro-AI policies" is, of course, pure poetry. At this rate, we'll be told that lightning-fast chips are needed to sequence proteins, and we'll have to take their word for it because independent evaluation is so last season. The only thing more optimistic than the claims is the idea that these same firms will be accountable if the unregulated reality falls short. Still, it's a relief to know the future is in the hands of people who see regulation as the only disease left to cure. Fingers crossed it's not contagious.