After famed investor Marc Andreessen met with authorities officers about the way forward for tech final Might, he was “very scared” and described the conferences as “completely horrifying.” These conferences performed a key position on why he endorsed Trump, he instructed journalist Bari Weiss this week on her podcast.
What scared him most was what some stated concerning the authorities’s position in AI, and what he described as a younger workers who have been “radicalized” and “out for blood” and whose coverage concepts could be “damaging” to his and Silicon Valley’s pursuits.
He walked away believing they endorsed having the federal government management AI to the purpose of being market makers, permitting solely a few corporations who cooperated with the federal government to thrive. He felt they discouraged his investments in AI. “They really stated flat out to us, ‘don’t do AI startups like, don’t fund AI startups,” he stated.
Clearly, we don’t know the way the opposite people within the assembly would recall such discussions, and even who he met with. However we are able to perceive why such ideas could be horrifying for Andreessen particularly: His agency has backed AI startups like Elon Musk’s xAI, Mistral AI, and Character.AI.
It’s price noting that in June 2023, lengthy earlier than these conferences, Andreessen revealed an AI manifesto known as “Why AI will save the world” through which he warned in opposition to AI regulation. So that is an space that’s been on his thoughts for some time.
Publicly, the administration has enacted much less drastic measures round AI than what Andreessen recalled. In October 2023, President Joe Biden issued an government order that contained a sequence of voluntary commitments for AI corporations to comply with. This included asking corporations to share security take a look at outcomes with the federal government and known as upon Congress to guage how AI corporations have been gathering information.
The order received blended critiques from Silicon Valley on the time. OpenAI’s Sam Altman tweeted that, whereas there have been “some nice elements” to the initiative, “will probably be essential to not decelerate innovation by smaller corporations/analysis groups.”
The subsequent administration is, to date, indicating its plans to play particularly properly with AI startups. Earlier this month, Trump declared that investor VC David Sacks could be his AI and crypto czar, after which each Altman and Perplexity confirmed they might donate $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. “President Trump will lead our nation into the age of AI, and I’m desirous to help his efforts to make sure America stays forward,” Altman stated in an announcement to Bloomberg Information.
Andreessen himself has spent about half his time in Mar-a-Lago for the reason that election. He confirmed to Weiss the hypothesis that he was concerned in Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative, describing himself as an “an unpaid volunteer.” He additionally stated that, at Mar-a-Lago, he’s “been concerned in a few of the interviewing course of for a few of the officers coming in.”
Andreessen stated he felt hopeful about Trump’s strategy to tech, saying Trump instructed him, “I don’t know a lot about tech, however I don’t have to, since you guys know so much about it. You guys ought to go construct tech corporations. The American tech corporations ought to win.”