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 function 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 function in AI, and what he described as a younger workers who had 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 firms 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 understand how 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 referred to as “Why AI will save the world” wherein 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 collection of voluntary commitments for AI firms to comply with. This included asking firms to share security check outcomes with the federal government and referred to as upon Congress to guage how AI firms had been gathering information.
The order obtained combined evaluations from Silicon Valley on the time. OpenAI’s Sam Altman tweeted that, whereas there have been “some nice components” to the initiative, “will probably be vital to not decelerate innovation by smaller firms/analysis groups.”
The following administration is, up to now, 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’d donate $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. “President Trump will lead our nation into the age of AI, and I’m wanting to assist his efforts to make sure America stays forward,” Altman stated in a press release to Bloomberg Information.
Andreessen himself has spent about half his time in Mar-a-Lago because the 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 number of the interviewing course of for a number of the officers coming in.”
Andreessen stated he felt hopeful about Trump’s method to tech, saying Trump instructed him, “I don’t know a lot about tech, however I don’t have to, since you guys know lots about it. You guys ought to go construct tech firms. The American tech firms ought to win.”
