Trump’s AI agenda hands Silicon Valley the win—while ethics, safety, and ‘woke AI’ get left behind
Hello and welcome to Eye on AI! In this edition:
Yesterday, I recapped my day at “Winning the AI Race”—an event hosted by the All-In podcast and the Hill & Valley coalition—where Silicon Valley’s elite descended on Washington’s stately Andrew Mellon Auditorium to celebrate President Trump’s new AI Action Plan, which he signed onstage after a surreal afternoon that fused podcast spectacle with public policy. The only non–Silicon Valley touch seemed to be the sea of suits that replaced the typical tech uniform of hoodies and sneakers (though Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang refused to budge from his usual leather jacket and black jeans).
Trump’s speech before scrawling his signature went on so long that I missed my Amtrak train back to New Jersey. While I waited for the next one, I had plenty of time to reflect on the day—which, without question, was a victory lap for the so-called AI “accelerationists,” now led in Washington by David Sacks, Trump’s appointed AI and crypto czar and co-host of the All-In podcast.
Pushing Silicon Valley’s pro-speed, pro-scale ideology
Sacks—along with senior White House AI policy advisor Sriram Krishnan and Office of Science and Technology Policy director Michael Kratsios, both of whom were also present at the event—has been front and center pushing Silicon Valley’s pro-speed, pro-scale ideology, advocating for rapid deployment and minimal regulation of AI.
For the “accelerationists”—those who believe the rapid development and deployment of artificial intelligence should be pursued as quickly as possible—innovation, scale, and speed are everything. Over-caution and regulation? Ill-conceived barriers that will actually cause more harm than good. They argue that faster progress will unlock massive economic growth, scientific breakthroughs, and national advantage. And if superintelligence is inevitable, they say, the U.S. had better get there first—before rivals like China’s authoritarian regime.
AI ethics and safety has been sidelined
This worldview, articulated by Marc Andreessen in his 2023 blog post, has now almost entirely displaced the diverse coalition of people who worked on AI ethics and safety during the Biden Administration—from mainstream policy experts focused on algorithmic fairness and accountability, to the safety researchers in Silicon Valley who warn of existential risks. While they often disagreed on priorities and tone, both camps shared the belief that AI needed thoughtful guardrails. Today, they find themselves largely out of step with an agenda that prizes speed, deregulation, and dominance.
Whether these groups can claw their way back to the table is still an open question. The mainstream ethics folks—with roots in civil rights, privacy, and democratic governance—may still have influence at the margins, or through international efforts. The existential risk researchers, once tightly linked to labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, still hold sway in academic and philanthropic circles. But in today’s environment—where speed, scale, and geopolitical muscle set the tone—both camps face an uphill climb. If they’re going to make a comeback, I get the feeling it won’t be through philosophical arguments. More likely, it would be because something goes wrong—and the public pushes back.
Also: I hope you’ll check out my first-ever Fortune cover story –a deep dive into Meta’s superintelligence spending spree, with a massive bet by Mark Zuckerberg on new chief AI officer and Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang. Also, don’t miss the marvelous feature from Jeremy Kahn about how Aravind Srinivas turned Perplexity into an $18 billion would-be Google killer. All part of our upcoming Most Powerful People issue!
With that, here’s the rest of the AI news.
Sharon Goldman
sharon.goldman@fortune.com
@sharongoldman
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com