Plotting

 TIME - Tech


Trump Signs Order Calling for AI Development 'Free From Ideological Bias'

TIME - Tech

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on artificial intelligence Thursday that will revoke past government policies his order says "act as barriers to American AI innovation." To maintain global leadership in AI technology, "we must develop AI systems that are free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas," Trump's order says. The new order doesn't name which existing policies are hindering AI development but sets out to track down and review "all policies, directives, regulations, orders, and other actions taken" as a result of former President Joe Biden's sweeping AI executive order of 2023, which Trump rescinded Monday. Any of those Biden-era actions must be suspended if they don't fit Trump's new directive that AI should "promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security." Last year, the Biden administration issued a policy directive that said U.S. federal agencies must show their artificial intelligence tools aren't harming the public, or stop using them. Trump's order directs the White House to revise and reissue those directives, which affect how agencies acquire AI tools and use them.


What to Know About 'Stargate,' OpenAI's New Venture Announced by President Trump

TIME - Tech

President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a 500 billion joint venture between OpenAI, Softbank, MGX and Oracle to build new datacenters to power the next wave of artificial intelligence (AI) โ€“ in an early signal that his Administration would embrace the technology. The plans, which predate the Trump Administration and involve no U.S. government funds, would result in the construction of large datacenters on U.S. soil containing thousands of advanced computer chips required to train new AI systems. "We want to keep it in this country; China's a competitor," Trump said of AI. "I'm going to help a lot through emergency declarations โ€“ we have an emergency, we have to get this stuff built." The message echoed recent talking points by the heads of AI companies like Sam Altman of OpenAI, who flanked him during the White House announcement. Altman has argued more vocally in recent months that the U.S. must race to build the energy and datacenter infrastructure in order to create powerful AI before China.


'Big Money and High Quality People': Stargate Joint Venture to Invest in U.S. AI Infrastructure

TIME - Tech

President Donald Trump on Tuesday talked up a joint venture investing up to 500 billion for infrastructure tied to artificial intelligence by a new partnership formed by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank. The new entity, Stargate, will start building out data centers and the electricity generation needed for the further development of the fast-evolving AI in Texas, according to the White House. The initial investment is expected to be 100 billion and could reach five times that sum. "It's big money and high quality people," said Trump, adding that it's "a resounding declaration of confidence in America's potential" under his new administration. Joining Trump fresh off his inauguration at the White House were Masayoshi Son of SoftBank, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Larry Ellison of Oracle.


A New Group Aims to Protect Whistleblowers In the Trump Era

TIME - Tech

The world needs whistleblowers, perhaps now more than ever. But whistleblowing has never been more dangerous. Jennifer Gibson has seen this problem develop up close. As a whistleblower lawyer based in the U.K., she has represented concerned insiders in the national security and tech worlds for more than a decade. She's represented family members of civilians killed by Pentagon drone strikes, and executives from top tech companies who've turned against their billionaire bosses.


The Biggest Moments from the 2025 TIME100 Dinner in Davos

TIME - Tech

Leaders from across the world of business, technology, policy, and entertainment gathered at the TIME100 Davos Dinner as the World Economic Forum's 55th annual meeting kicked off on Jan. 20. In keeping with this year's annual meeting theme "Collaboration for the Intelligent Age," Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of AI company Anthropic, joined TIME editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs on stage to talk about the future of AI. Discussing what Amodei calls powerful AI, which he prefers over Artificial General Intelligence because of the latter's connotations with science fiction, the CEO emphasized the importance of understanding the reality of the technology's potential. "We have to be very serious about when this actually happens, what is possible and what exists. What are the bounds that are provided by physics, by the limits in human institutions, what's left after we consider those," he said.


5 Predictions for AI in 2025

TIME - Tech

If 2023 was the year of AI fervor, following the late-2022 release of ChatGPT, 2024 was marked by a steady drumbeat of advances as systems got smarter, faster, and cheaper to run. AI also began to reason more deeply and interact via voice and video--trends that AI experts and leaders say will accelerate. Here's what to expect from AI in 2025. In 2025, we'll begin to see a shift from chatbots and image generators toward "agentic" systems that can act autonomously to complete tasks, rather than simply answer questions, says AI futurist Ray Kurzweil. In October, Anthropic gave its AI model Claude the ability to use computers--clicking, scrolling, and typing--but this may be just the start.


Inside the U.K.'s Bold Experiment in AI Safety

TIME - Tech

In May 2023, three of the most important CEOs in artificial intelligence walked through the iconic black front door of No. 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the U.K. Prime Minister, in London. Sam Altman of OpenAI, Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind, and Dario Amodei of Anthropic were there to discuss AI, following the blockbuster release of ChatGPT six months earlier. After posing for a photo opportunity with then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in his private office, the men filed through into the cabinet room next door and took seats at its long, rectangular table. Sunak and U.K. government officials lined up on one side; the three CEOs and some of their advisers sat facing them. After a polite discussion about how AI could bring opportunities for the U.K. economy, Sunak surprised the visitors by saying he wanted to talk about the risks.


Why Biden Is Rushing to Restrict AI Chip Exports

TIME - Tech

The Biden Administration's move on Jan. 13 to curb exports on the advanced computer chips used to power artificial intelligence (AI) arrived in the wake of two major events over the Christmas holidays that rattled the world of AI. First, OpenAI released its latest model, o3, which achieved an 88% on a set of difficult reasoning tests on which no AI system had previously scored above 5%. "All intuition about AI capabilities will need to get updated" in light of the results, said Francois Chollet, a former AI researcher at Google and a prominent skeptic of the argument that "artificial general intelligence" (AGI) would be achieved any time soon. Second, the Chinese company DeepSeek released an open-source AI model that outperformed any American open-source language model, including Meta's Llama series. The achievement surprised many AI researchers and U.S. officials, who had believed China lagged behind in terms of AI capabilities.


Biden Proposes New Export Curbs on AI Chips, Provoking an Industry Pushback

TIME - Tech

The Biden administration is proposing a new framework for the exporting of the advanced computer chips used to develop artificial intelligence, an attempt to balance national security concerns about the technology with the economic interests of producers and other countries. But the framework proposed Monday also raised concerns of chip industry executives who say the rules would limit access to existing chips used for video games and restrict in 120 countries the chips used for data centers and AI products. Mexico, Portugal, Israel and Switzerland are among the nations that could have limited access. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on a call with reporters previewing the framework that it's "critical" to preserve America's leadership in AI and the development of AI-related computer chips. The fast-evolving AI technology enables computers to produce novels, make scientific research breakthroughs, automate driving and foster a range of other transformations that could reshape economies and warfare.


How OpenAI's Sam Altman Is Thinking About AGI and Superintelligence in 2025

TIME - Tech

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently published a post on his personal blog reflecting on AI progress and his predictions for how the technology will impact humanity's future. "We are now confident we know how to build AGI [artificial general intelligence] as we have traditionally understood it,"Altman wrote. He added that OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is beginning to turn its attention to superintelligence. While there is no universally accepted definition for AGI, OpenAI has historically defined it as "a highly autonomous system that outperforms humans at most economically valuable work." Although AI systems already outperform humans in narrow domains, such as chess, the key to AGI is generality.