
President Donald Trump reportedly plans to sign an executive order today creating something called the American AI Initiative. The executive order is apparently a symbolic nod to artificial intelligence that doesnât create any new funding but encourages the federal government to do more with AI. And we canât help but wonder, what are the odds that President Trump knows anything about what heâs signing today?
We donât even mean to be snarky or mean by asking the question. But itâs worth asking given the presidentâs dangerous incompetence and complete lack of intellectual curiosity. Does President Trump, someone who regularly insists that he knows a lot about technology but has used a computer maybe twice in his entire life, have any idea what heâs signing later today? Do you think Trump could describe in even the most basic terms what his new American AI Initiative seeks to accomplish? As reported by multiple news outlets, the American AI Initiative is simply a âstrategyâ to get the federal government more involved in artificial intelligence.
The executive order will seek to âredirectâ existing funding, but itâs not clear where that funding will be âredirectedâ from. All we know for sure is that it wonât be redirected from billionaires. They already got a huge tax break in one of the largest transfers of wealth from the poor to the rich in modern history. If nothing else, the White House seems to have provided plenty of meaningless buzzwords about the AI endeavor.
âWeâre excited to be developing principles and an agenda with American values in mind,â one anonymous Trump regime official told the Wall Street Journal. âThat is something weâre excited to share with the world.â
âThis executive order is about ensuring continued America leadership in AI, which includes ensuring AI technologies reflect American values, policies, and priorities,â an anonymous official told Axios.
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âAI is something that touches every aspect of peopleâs lives. What this initiative attempts to do is to bring all those together under one umbrella and show the promise of this technology for the American people,â an anonymous Trump regime official told Reuters.
What does any of that mean? Your guess is as good as ours. And we expect to hear precisely as much stirring detail about it after President Trump signs the thing later today. What are the odds that Trumpâs aides simply said the words âitâs to fight Chinaâ and Trump said okay before turning his attention back to Fox News? Pretty good.
If it seems like youâre seeing the news of President Trumpâs executive order everywhere this morning, thatâs by design. News organizations all hit publish on their stories at midnight, presumably because the White House approached them with a news âembargo.â
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Some of the headlines that news organizations went with overnight:
- Wired: Trumpâs Plan to Keep America First in AI
- MIT Technology Review: Trump has a plan to keep America first in artificial intelligence
- New York Times: Trump to Sign Executive Order Promoting Artificial Intelligence
- Reuters: Trump administration unveils order to prioritize and promote AI
- Wall Street Journal: Trump Seeks to Boost AI as Chinese Competition Grows
- Axios: Trump to Lay Out an AI Plan
The stated purpose of a news embargo is to allow news organizations time to talk with experts and get an independent opinion without rushing a story to press. Gizmodo honors embargoes all the time, especially for science coverage. But embargoes are often used for cynical, public relations purposes. And this appears to be a case of the latter. Itâs almost as if the White House was able to press âpublishâ on half a dozen press releases simultaneously, all while keeping the government sources completely anonymous for some reason.
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Itâs genuinely strange that the Trump regime is able to get away with this kind of control over news in an environment where theyâve ruined so much. The president has been exposed as arguably the most corrupt politician of the past 100 years as he continues to profit from his position in countless ways and his own lawyer is going to jail for something that the president instructed him to do. Not to mention that President Trump has overseen some of the most barbaric human rights violations on American soil in recent memory through his immigrant family separation policyâsomething that Trump regime members still insist isnât an actual policy despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Two children have even died in government custody in recent months and countless others are enduring systematic child abuse through the countryâs concentration camps for asylum seekers. And yet everything is moving along like normal. The White House still issues news embargoes and media organizations still publish what the White House wants them to publish precisely when the White House wants them to publish it.
And to make matters even more strange, congressional talks have apparently broken down and America is headed toward another government shutdown on February 15 over the presidentâs racist border wall with Mexico.
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Yes, it seems like itâs going to be another of those weeks. But if weâre being honest with ourselves every week is one of those weeks now.