Trump scraps AI safeguard following millions in donations from tech executives
Much has been said about the need for government intervention for AI development in recent weeks, yet President Trump has done quite the opposite by removing key safeguarding regulation — and coincidentally it happened after significant donations from leading tech executives.
The tech world has become consumed with the fear that AI will 'kill us all' if development continues at its current pace, and leaders like OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei have called for action before things go bad.
What could likely have contributed to the cause of those fears, however, is the removal of AI regulatory measured laid out by the Biden administration, binned just days after US President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office back in January 2025.
It has been no secret that President Trump is keen on winning the 'AI race' – a belief that has been consistently reasserted in the face of concern from the industry itself in recent weeks – but the timing of donations from high-up individual at companies like OpenAI, xAI, and more have led some to believe that the motivation to do so, especially at the pace that Trump did, was accelerated due to lobbying efforts.
What did the AI regulation do before it was removed?
While Biden implemented a wide-reaching set of AI regulations, it appears as if AI companies specifically took issue with a mandate that required them to report any experiments to regulators at the federal government, as reported by The Lever, in a bid to mitigate risk down the line.
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These rules, according to officials at the time, were designed to stop 'dangerous accidents' from occurring as they could lead to 'injury or even loss of life' — something that is certainly relevant to the conversation now.
Development labs were predictably unhappy with these regulations, however, as they likely saw them as an additional hurdle to clear what could be game-changing progress in a race that valued speed over everything, and saw Trump's reelection as an opportunity to remove these rules.
Trump received major donations from tech executives
As per The New Republic, many of the tech industry's biggest names donated to Donald Trump around the period of his election win – with the vast majority providing funds towards the inauguration – yet several prominent figures connected to the AI industry appeared to specifically lobby for the safeguarding measure to be removed.
This included Tools for Humanity – owned by Altman – which provided $5 million to the super PAC, MAGA Inc., alongside donations from OpenAI investor Marc Adreesson and his partner Ben Horowitz to the tune of $6 million in total.
Trump also received $5 million from Elon Musk – before the two had a falling out, of course – and a jaw-dropping $25 million donation was received from OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman.
AI development labs now call for similar regulation to return
Where Trump has remained firm in his belief that work on new AI models should continue with haste, the AI industry itself is worried that unmitigated efforts could cause humanity to 'lose control' of AI that is increasingly taking the reins of its own development.
This doesn't equate to a complete halt, as development will undoubtedly continue, but Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI have all agreed that change needs to be put in place, and that includes independent regulation and the government taking on responsibility.
What was once a limitation in development is now seen as a necessity to prevent the risk of our own extinction, but it doesn't look like the companies pushing for these changes are going to get exactly what they want, leaving the rest of the world to deal with the consequences.