If You Want AI to Die in a Fire, Trump Might Be Your Ally

Donald Trump arrived in office for his second term on the back of hundreds of millions of dollars of Silicon Valley money and a simple dictate from his backers: Leave us alone. That worked for a little while, but now Trump’s approval rating is so far underwater that it’s discovering previously unknown shipwrecks. That has him looking for a new way to align himself with the public, and the AI industry looks mighty ripe for some administrative meddling. That is setting up the ultimate showdown of an unstoppable force in the form of the endlessly upward trajectory of AI lab valuations, versus the immovable object that is the unexplainable and intangible but very real Trump curse that seems to come out any time he sticks his nose where it doesn’t belong. At this point, the Trump Curse is pretty well established. After getting elected to office for a second time and operating under the assumption that he had not only a political mandate but a social one, Trump has sought to inject himself into just about every part of American life. He’s put his face on passports, his signature on money, and has started showing up at major public events that were not hand-selected to guarantee him a che