Who Needs Regulation When Trump Is President?

One consistent complaint against the Trump administration is that it is imposing personalist rule, in which the whims of the leader override the law.

Now Donald Trump has come out forcefully against regulating artificial intelligence—and his argument is based almost explicitly on the superiority of his omniscience over any formal legal process.

He is not so much refuting the charge of personalism as turning it into a promise.

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” he wrote in a self-refuting post on Truth Social.

Even the most market-friendly economist will concede that government intervention is required when any private activity creates an “externality”—that is, a cost imposed on people who are not involved in a transaction.

A factory dumping toxic waste into a stream has heretofore provided the textbook case of an externality necessitating regulation.

But AI bots destroying human civilization—as executives are warning could happen—clearly represents a much costlier externality.

This is, in fact, probably the strongest conceivable case for regulation.

The intense competitive pressure among AI firms, which have a much stronger incentive to innovate quickly than to ensure their innovations are safe, enhances the case further.

Skeptics have valid reasons to worry about poorly designed regulation that either entrenches the current industry leaders or permits Chinese AI to overtake the American version.

Those are reasons to demand well-designed regulations, not to avoid any rules at all. [ Read: The singularity is not what it seems ] Against this overwhelming rationale, Trump offers, in place of any neutral standards, his characteristic faith in his own prerogatives.

Trump tends to discount the need for laws even in areas where he favors government action.

He opposed congressional authorization for war with Iran.

He has not asked Congress to levy tariffs, preferring instead to raise or lower them and provide carve-outs to affected firms based on his whim.