Trump All-In On AI As He Revokes Biden-Era AI Regulations

On his first day back in the White House, President Trump revoked nearly 80 of President Biden’s executive orders, including the one Biden signed in October 2023 to establish federal regulations concerning artificial intelligence (AI).

Among the numerous impacts of Biden’s executive order on AI was establishing government regulations and standards to ensure that AI systems did not threaten the American public, whether by taking their jobs or exposing the United States and its people to grave threats.

Trump’s executive order, which serves to revoke Biden’s attempt to mitigate AI’s risks, sings the same tune as many of Trump’s early executive actions: deregulating the government. Trump and other Republican lawmakers claim that deregulation is a win for free speech and will bolster the economy.

One AI-related Biden-era action Trump did not target was Biden’s executive order last week that ensured that AI data centers had the necessary power to operate. The United States believes that AI centers may need as much as five gigawatts of energy by 2028, equivalent to the power generated by about 9.44 million solar panels or two and a half Hoover Dams.

Biden’s recent AI energy executive order also said that AI data centers that purchase federal land for their operations must buy an “appropriate share” of American-made semiconductors, which may also jive well with Presiden Trump’s “America first” promises.

With Trump’s new executive order, the federal government immediately stops all activity concerning AI safety and transparency, opening the doors for companies to run wild and unchecked, unless President Trump enacts a new order with different regulations than Biden’s. However, political experts unanimously expect Trump’s White House to take a relatively hands-off approach to AI.

Before being sworn back into office, Trump had repeatedly said that Biden’s AI regulations served to hinder technological innovation, a complaint that tech companies themselves levied against President Biden.

These tech companies were on hand to watch Trump be sworn back into office on Monday, January 20, 2025. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s chief executive Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Elon Musk all had premium seating positions at Trump’s inauguration, just behind the President’s family.

TikTok chief executive Shou Zi Chou was also at the inauguration, a fact that ties nicely into Trump’s executive order that delays the TikTok ban for 75 days. This gives TikTok more time to find a potential U.S. buyer, assuming that TikTok will remain beholden to the law passed by Congress and approved by the United States Supreme Court. There’s little doubt that one of the tech moguls seated in the second row at the inauguration would love a piece of that pie.

Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.