Trump’s victory will profit Elon Musk and xAI

Disclaimer: I voted for Kamala Harris within the 2024 presidential election and stand by my alternative.

Republican politician and businessman Donald J. Trump has received the 2024 U.S. presidential election in a powerful political comeback, regardless of varied pre-election polls displaying him neck-and-neck together with his opponent Kamala Harris (the present and now outgoing Vice President, a Democrat).

As many who observe the information know all too effectively, one in every of his most outspoken allies on this election was none different six-company proprietor/operator and know-how multibillionaire Elon Musk, who dedicated tens of tens of millions in funding to a political motion committee advocating Trump’s re-election.

All of Musk’s know-how firms stand to learn from Trump’s return to workplace

Musk owns or operates the next firms, all of which stand to learn from Trump retaking energy:

• Tesla Motors: Although Trump has pledged to not implement electrical car mandates or tighter emissions requirements, Musk’s in style electrical car and autonomous car firm may gain advantage from loosened restrictions on car requirements general, particularly as regards to autonomy. Already, Tesla inventory is up greater than 13% at the moment on the election being known as for Trump.
• SpaceX: Musk’s rocketry and spacefaring firm has feuded earlier than with the federal authorities, significantly the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which simply final month levied $633,009 in fines to SpaceX alleging it didn’t “observe its license necessities throughout two launches in 2023.” Musk would possible search to make use of the Trump Administration to recall this tremendous and take away future licensing necessities stopping what he sees as obligatory pace and nimbleness from the company or a extra “hands-off” method.
• Starlink: Equally, Musk’s satellite tv for pc web offshoot Starlink, which presently has greater than 6,000 satellites beaming web from orbit, would possible profit from Trump’s pledges to cut back administrative burdens and purple tape from federal regulatory companies such because the Federal Communications Fee (FCC) and FAA.
• Neuralink: Musk’s experimental mind implant firm has reportedly induced the demise, damage and dismemberment of check monkeys but in addition additionally been efficiently implanted right into a paralyzed human affected person, permitting them to manage a pc with their mind indicators. Given it’s a medical gadget, it’s overseen by the federal Meals and Drug Administration, which has already authorised Neuralink implantation in people and trials. However the Trump victory will possible solely additional clear the best way for Neuralink to ramp up its trials on extra human topics and achieve this quicker.
• X: Musk’s social community, the renamed Twitter he bought for $44 billion two years in the past, has already been by way of a means of mass and focused layoffs, in addition to coverage and have updates allowing extra freewheeling and extremist speech and content material, and led to a extra political right-wing oriented userbase and content material. This pattern is more likely to proceed and X to realize much more prominence as a mouthpiece for Musk’s, Trump’s, and their allies’ positions.

xAI could profit and transfer from being a runner-up within the AI race to a frontrunner

However most significantly of all, xAI, Musk’s AI startup offshoot of X designed to rival his former firm OpenAI, is now more likely to turn out to be much more of a viable various to the U.S. authorities and navy as a contractor and AI know-how companies supplier.

Already, the U.S. authorities has been courted by and is reportedly working with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta to combine generative AI fashions into varied departments.

Nonetheless, now that Musk helped propel Trump to a victory, anticipate xAI to hitch within the record of federally authorised AI distributors and presumably even most well-liked AI distributors — although in fact, the federal government is technically supposed to stay vendor-neutral for firms working inside the U.S., signing contracts based mostly on request-for-proposals and the companies’ health for the job.

xAI may also possible profit from repealed Biden-era AI Govt Order

But as AI influencer Andrew Curran famous on Musk’s X community this morning, one other direct end result of Trump reassuming the White Home come January 2025 (when he’s to be sworn in) is a powerful probability — outlined within the Republican Social gathering election platform — of the repeal of outgoing President Joe Biden’s Govt Order (EO) on AI, which Biden issued in October 2023 and requires builders of highly effective basis fashions to share security check outcomes and different vital data with the US authorities and topics firms coaching AI fashions to red-teaming workout routines by the federal company The Nationwide Institute of Requirements and Expertise (NIST).

Whereas many within the AI {industry} and outdoors of it applauded this order as a way of guaranteeing security of AI deployments on American and international society, some analysts instructed it may result in undermining U.S. AI competitiveness on the worldwide stage, each within the industrial (direct-to-consumer and business-to-business) market and the navy area.

As such, with the possible repeal of this EO come January 2025 or early 2025, it may assist xAI and its opponents in delivery new fashions quicker — although as we’ve seen with xAI’s Grok-2 and its permissive picture era characteristic, that may additionally result in an increase in deepfakes and different wild, offensive, but in addition inventive and imaginative AI imagery.

Both means, issues are trying good for Musk’s firms and xAI specifically – and that will assist the corporate’s fashions turn out to be extra attractive to builders and enterprise prospects.