White House’s ‘lack of organization’ has AI lobbyists fretting

Seven lobbyists and policy advisers told POLITICO they've struggled to get straight answers from the White House about a potential executive order on AI vetting. 'Mixed messages,' they say, which is Washington-speak for 'no one has a clue.' The administration, it seems, is too busy playing regulatory hide-and-seek to actually produce a rule. One might almost find it charming — if the stakes weren't, you know, the entire trajectory of artificial intelligence.

The lobbyists are fretting because this executive order is rumoured to impose 'tough vetting rules' on new AI models. Tough. Vetting. Rules. In theory, that might be a good thing — but when your signal-to-noise ratio from the White House is zero, 'tough' could mean anything from 'basic safety checks' to 'ban everything that smacks of reasoning.' The uncertainty is the problem, not the content. And uncertainty is exactly what you get when you leave AI policy to a team that can't decide which direction is up.

Still, maybe this chaos is deliberate. If you never actually issue the order, you never have to enforce it. The tech giants can keep releasing half-baked models, the lobbyists can keep billing hourly, and the White House can claim it's 'carefully considering.' Everyone wins — except, as usual, the rest of us. Cheers to progress, or whatever the opposite is.