My prediction: nothing will come of this, and these investigations will either be concluded favorably or dropped no less than six months after the midterms.
There's only one voice that matters in this administration, and he has already made it quite clear that he both does not consider AI to be an issue, and he is more than happy to trample over his agencies to enforce his opinion.
The problem is that there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that Democrats would be doing the exact same thing if they were in power.
They will also put up only PR-oriented #resistance, aiming all attacks at Trump (as you have) and ignoring the AI companies themselves.
They'll save their criticism for loudmouth AI CEOs that agree to jump out and catch a few bullets (that will bounce off harmlessly, it doesn't matter what the public thinks about them) aimed at Democratic politicians who just voted for something they said that they were against because the Republicans didn't have enough for a majority.
Even worse than whataboutism is hypothetical whataboutism....
AI is shaping up to be a major concern amongst the non-tech segment of the population. Some of the arguments are good, some are dumb, but people largely are forming up against AI and datacenters. Yes, you should expect politicians to act on that; it's how the system is meant to work.
Silicon Valley was freaking out last democrat admin because anti trust laws were actually being enforced finally by Lina Khan, I actually completely disagree and I think this admin has been very obviously worse.
So why did the tech CEOs and VCs get behind Trump's reelection if there's no meaningful difference? We can see it already, Trump is saying they should regulate themselves.
You're right. Nothing will come out of this. It is very important for these companies that they are sued now by the super-friendly administration and be gently punished (Punishment: Don't do it again, Ok? Defendents: We promise we won't do it again) or settled for a measly sum of a few million (no admission of guilt).
Then you can be never tried again for the same crimes. There is some law against being tried for the same crimes multiple times.
That's not how that works. If you kill someone and are tried for it, guilty or not, that does not give you license to go kill more people. You can be tried for the same crime if you do the crime again.
You cannot be tried multiple times for the same instance of a crime.
Since OAI et al don't appear interested in stopping crime, they can (and likely will) be tried again the next time they do it.
Technically from a legal perspective sure, but there is also the common cultural understanding of these things, and an overton window of how we talk about them. The whole doomer narrative, and pseudo-anthromorphization (xenomorphization?) where we ascribe agency and volition to the algorithm, plays right to the interests of the AI leaders by simultaneously making their products so incredibly powerful and civilization altering that of course the valuations are justified, while also providing a convenient narrative that if anything goes wrong the AI did it and there was no way for them to control this new life form. Privatize the benefit, socialize the risk; this is not a new playbook.
Ffs one of the CEOs of one of the companies is about to be in charge of a us military task force lol. The ftc investigating military leadership over safety concerns... Bet... Definitely going to yield results that benefit the public. Lol. Doesn't get more textbook oligarchy than that.
This is an ignorant take. Everybody involved in the administration has pretty much been on the same page that the new regulations openai/anthropic want aren't necessary because they are already liable for what their ai does.
Scott Bessent has had several foot-in-mouth gaffes through his tenure, I would not put much weight on his words in this case, especially if they contradict his handler.
This is how tons of startups operate, I used to be able to get across the whole city in an Uber for $5, easily quarter of the cost at the time. They undercut taxis until they barely existed then jacked up the prices.
VC creates little wars of attrition in every industry and calls it "disruption" but it mostly pulls the money out of workers' pockets.
They just need to hire the right lobbyists, get a meeting at the White House, agree on the terms and call it a settlement.
And if the FTC chair is not agreeable, they will be threatened by said lobbyists and eventually be fired.
If this sounds far-fetched, it is exactly what happened to Gail Slater, then-head of the DOJ's antitrust division and her deputies in 2025 over HPE’s bid to acquire Juniper.
Things are more corrupt in the US now. That would have worked in Trump 1.0.
I predict they’ll be forced to install an “ombudsman” in the data cleaning / training team, so Trump can inject propaganda and filter out science. (As has been done to many US news outlets already).
Also, they will somehow each put >> $1B into his personal checking account, and hope presidential pardons cover bribing the president after the next few elections.
I assume you’ll keep the same disdain when the ombudsman is replaced by the democrats in two years and continues the same work with new talking points?
Conversely, you could say that congress has delegated "judicial and legislative" powers to the executive, whose will is embodied in a democratically elected president.
"Gail Slater" is not a democratically elected person of any kind, and exists as a function of the executive, and hence of the president's policies. Insofar as the DOJ's anti-trust's leaders depart from the will of the elected president, it is that leader to be fired and replaced. Or else: what ever was the point of electing a president?
There's nothing in principle wrong in a president disagreeing with the execution of his executive powers, delegated to Gail, and hence firing him. Indeed, if that were not the case, the election of a president could never change the operation of the executive, making the election pointless.
If you disagree with the anti-trust decision, the issue isn't with the political mechanism by which it was over-ruled, but with the election of that president.
Suppose a president was elected that you voted for, that you agreed with was blocked by one of his employees... are you really trusting the hiring process of one of his predecessors?
> you could say that congress has delegated "judicial and legislative" powers to the executive, whose will is embodied in a democratically elected president.
Bullshit. No, you cannot say that. “The non-delegation doctrine is a constitutional principle that Congress cannot delegate its legislative powers to another branch of government or to private entities.”
You get two downvotes for lies, one for each post.
Ah, well if you take the view that congress cannot delegate these powers, then there can be no executive anti-trust office, so this whole thing is moot.
However, this isn't the mainstream view -- but a radical departure of several hundred years of mixed-power agencies. See, eg., archetypally, The Fed. A wide variety of federal agencies are mixed powers, esp. regulation of businesses by the executive which is a legislative (administrators make rules) and judicial power (administrators decide if they apply). This is uncontroversial, I know of no view on this which denies this claim.
There is nothing in my comment which can be "a lie", because its offering a theory of government which the original commenter lacked. Its not clear what theory of government is supposed to enable an executive anti-trust office with the power to intervene without a court, that isnt subject to presidential oversight.
People down-voting because they disagree with the theory of government offered is just as confused. The point of HN is to reply to something you disagree with, if offered in good faith, not to down-vote it.
>“Review all Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigations commenced under the previous administration to ensure that they do not advance theories of liability that unduly burden AI innovation.”
I am legit curious though: what changed specifically in your information gathering process that revealed these things?
For example pretty much everything happening now has been well described by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn specifically about American politics since the 1960s. I mean similarly for the entire black community and don’t forget Martin Luther King was killed because he was trying to organize sanitation workers.
Chris Hedges has been reporting about the state of things daily for two decades now. Similarly for Jacobin magazine.
Ron Paul (whatever you think of him) was talking explicitly about this corruption in the context of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the bail out of the banking market in 2008.
Ross Perot famously described how Nafta was a big sellout to the multinational corporations and would devastate US industry - on stage at the 1992(?) presidential debate and everybody just made fun of him because he was short and had slightly larger ears because he was an older guy.
The US president sells early access to his official tweets at $100k per month. Things have definitely gotten worse even if they were shit to begin with.
Well a lot of this is simply published. Like, from reading a bill, agency rules, memos, whatever. Most of it is not hidden, except by...boredom? Like you had to be interested for whatever reason to go looking for it. Or embedded somehow in one of the institutions where you can see what the people at the bottom of the institution can see, without wanting to make a career out of it. Since if you decide that, then there's no incentive to notice.
The teapot dome wasn't the president making policy decisions specifically to enrich himself. The man involved conducted his illicit affairs in secret, and went to prison for it.
The blatant nature of it now and complete complicity of large swaths of the government in the corruption are a level that has never been seen before. The Teapot Dome scandal involved the equivalent of tens of millions of present day dollars. The actions of the president alone now are what would have been considered dozens of individual career-ending scandals only a couple generations ago.
At the state/city level, California and Los Angeles have much more blatant corruption. From the High Speed Rail to LA's billions of homeless money (now some invoices showing house purchases, ubers to and payments at strip clubs). I think more politicians are just shameless about it lately. Karen Bass was reelected anyway, and Gavin is gaining support in a run for presidency even. Buying votes has never been easier.
I don’t think there’s anything done in those states as blatant as Trump coin. Or the Qatari plane he already said is being moved to his foundation after his term.
You’re pointing at failed projects that may or may not have corruption(I’d like to see the receipts and from a mouth other than nick shirley) compared to explicit, I’m taking this money.
Or the IRS deal, or 1000 other in the air open corruption
It's so crazy how politicized fraud has gotten. Diehard Dems offhandedly dismiss Nick Shirley and DOGE even though all they look for is proof of fraud. If someone is doing that for free, why on earth would you want to stop or dismiss it before any evidence or reporting has been delivered? There's no shortage of it from either side, why defend the scummy parts of your party vs trying to root it out?
Yea none of this is as blatant as the public corruption Trump has done.
You understand what I mean by blatant right? Like this shit you linked didn’t have advertisements.
I dismiss Nick Shirley because he crows about corruption that was already being prosecuted as somehow being novel and the few bits I’ve listened to from him honestly made me think he might be a bit slow.
I dismiss DOGE because it accomplished next to nothing, if anything, lied about its accomplishments, and helped Musk get rid of shit that was against his private goals. DOGE was also corruption. Saying all they did was “… look for is proof of fraud” is factually incorrect.
"for free" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. By all reasonable measures, DOGE has cost far more than it has saved, and the vast majority of its recommended cuts were entirely political.
Do you do things without expecting something of benefit in return e.g. work?
Humans are conditioned to be like this. Govt indeed cares what you can do to extend its power and reach.
Not rocket science.
Thats why Ive never understood people who resist - you will be far better off in assisting and getting ahead of it to try and shape it. Then you MAY have a chance. Resisting it? Youre just delaying the inevitable I'm afraid.
Don’t forget the part where massive swaths of people who won’t risk anything at all, sneer at those that lost it all, because they aren’t perfectly aligned on some pet topic.
That's not an inherently bad practice. I'd much rather there be two way flow between industry and government than have people who have never tried to run a business doing regulation or those who have never worked in government trying to comply with regulations. Strong ethics rules and culture is the way you manage the downside, not bans.
The hell do you work where ethics culture exists in business? I gotta be looking in the wrong places, because all I ever see is lip service granted to ethics until they threaten the bottom line, then suddenly they disappear.
The AI discourse is full of cases where companies and their employees respect ethical boundaries at a cost to their bottom line. There was a famous incident, Project Glasswing, where Anthropic announced that they needed to do a large, collaborative cybersecurity project before they could ethically sell their newest model.
Of course, this story also points towards how people sometimes get confused. Most opportunities companies have to be unethical are complex, so if you're not already inclined to trust a company, it's easy to come up with reasons to distrust any claims of ethical behavior they make. Maybe they didn't want to do the unethical behavior in the first place, maybe they've made up self-serving ethical standards, maybe they're just being performatively ethical as a marketing strategy and they'll misbehave when nobody's looking.
Such commentary tends to go viral, because it's easy to propose and impossible to refute in a short comment or video.
Well you see, you just frame your ethics that anything done in service to the bottom line is inherently good. Easy as, anyone complaining about rapacious behavior or a decrease in their quality of life is the real evil (tm)
SOC2, a standard governed by the a CPA certification body, costs billions of dollars a year to collectively implement and doesn't meaningfully improve security. FDA auditors trying to regulate software development for clinical trial data capture makes clinical trial software cost ~30% more AND makes it lower quality. There are costs on both sides of the continuum. The costs for bad regulators are just diffuse.
SOC2 is an industry self-governing standard and a really bad example? if you pass SOC2, do you pass a federal audit of HIPAA and PII compliance? there's industry self-regulation that's often pointless and a costly rubber-stamp (like SOC2) and then there's actual audits of systems with legal teeth
if anything, your example serves to prove my point. for everything from baby formula regulatory standards to regulation of toxic pollutants being dumped untreated into water reserves, I'd much rather a robust, regulatory standard with teeth. for things in software, we're sorely lacking that which is why we have privacy breaches and gross misuse by large corporations on the regular not to mention dark patterns, behavioral manipulation, and outright gambling
I also want a robust regulatory standard with teeth. But I want it written and enforced by highly skilled people who have some actual experience with doing the thing that's regulated.
And in many fields the pay gap between government and private industry is such that you won't get good people to work for the government if that means they can never again work for private industry.
surely that can be solved by diverting money away from, say, military spending to regulatory bodies instead so these roles become both high-prestige and well-compensated (vs getting rid of regulatory bodies entire)
I didn't ever argue getting rid of them. I said staff them with people with industry experience who can move back and forth between industry and government. Even a well paid regulator who has never done the thing they are regulating is going to make stupid decisions.
> They just need to hire the right lobbyists, get a meeting at the White House, agree on the terms and call it a settlement.
I wonder if this is just self-consciously a self-dealing thing explicitly designed to block off further investigations. Clear them, then they can't be properly investigated for that activity in the future.
It doesn't really work that way, although I wouldn't rule out someone in the administration thinking it does. There's nothing an FTC investigator can do to "clear them" in a way that would prevent a future investigation for future instances of the same activity. An FTC decision not to bring a complaint or to request only trivial damages doesn't create a binding precedent for similar investigations later.
If the FTC weren't investigating three of the largest and fastest growing companies in the country for one thing or another, it would be kinda surprising to me.
FTC starting the process of immunizing OpenAI, Anthropic, and a few other well-connected AI companies from liabilities or future prosecutions for any of their fully premeditated actions.
Just a way to pretend like they're doing anything in front of the public. What's there to investigate? Risks are pretty wide open. Crimes have been committed and admitted to.
We could put Sam Altman and gdb on it; after all, they know a ton about AI. Elon Musk probably has some important insights too! They'd probably know best if a new competitor or any of these open source models should be allowed to exist. This should alleviate all sorts of problems (for OpenAI).
At least it is not compromised by anthropic/openai/deepmind. It has that going for it.
Perhaps it does not need saying but if you leave it to nonprofits overflowing with industry operatives and ai blood money, you get whatever openai or anthropic want you to hear (METR report).
> At least it is not compromised by anthropic/openai/deepmind
I wouldn’t be too surprised if some rationalist/EA folks aligned with the “AI will be a god” type of doomers have found their way into regulatory agencies
Imagine if a car company like Ford or Toyota came out and said their new cars are kind of out of control and they needed special indemnities and protection from liabilities if they want to keep selling cars.
Replace this with Tesla, Waymo, etc and it's not far fetched. It might take a while, but liability is going to need a new legal doctrine to describe why it's not their fault that their car & their code killed someone.
Imagine further that there's actually nothing unusually wrong with the cars at all, but the manufacturers are deliberately playing up perceptions of risk in order to encourage regulatory intervention that they know they can influence and/or work around, but which competing solutions can't.
They pretty much did. Cars get an insane amount of special legal treatment. It's basically legal to kill people with a car as long as you aren't drunk or grossly negligent.
I will be shocked if I live to see a year where AI kills more people than cars do legally.
Do we really think that FTC under this administration, which is in bed with top tech billionaires giving gifts for inauguration will do anything against them?
What a shame that the focus in the article seems to be on "winning." Seems like winning comes first and safety comes second, and the only question is how far apart they are. That's not surprising, but also not encouraging.
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[ 0.29 ms ] story [ 36.6 ms ] threadThere's only one voice that matters in this administration, and he has already made it quite clear that he both does not consider AI to be an issue, and he is more than happy to trample over his agencies to enforce his opinion.
which is putting it very mildly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49824686
They will also put up only PR-oriented #resistance, aiming all attacks at Trump (as you have) and ignoring the AI companies themselves.
They'll save their criticism for loudmouth AI CEOs that agree to jump out and catch a few bullets (that will bounce off harmlessly, it doesn't matter what the public thinks about them) aimed at Democratic politicians who just voted for something they said that they were against because the Republicans didn't have enough for a majority.
AI is shaping up to be a major concern amongst the non-tech segment of the population. Some of the arguments are good, some are dumb, but people largely are forming up against AI and datacenters. Yes, you should expect politicians to act on that; it's how the system is meant to work.
Then you can be never tried again for the same crimes. There is some law against being tried for the same crimes multiple times.
You cannot be tried multiple times for the same instance of a crime.
Since OAI et al don't appear interested in stopping crime, they can (and likely will) be tried again the next time they do it.
> Since OAI et al don't appear interested in stopping crime, they can (and likely will) be tried again the next time they do it.
There is no second entire internet for them to steal though
https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/12/elon-musk-trump-putin-s...
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/29/opinion/elon-musk-china-c...
https://fortune.com/2026/09/22/bessent-ai-labs-responsibilit...
How is this a fair, level, playing field, U.S.? Making a large pile of money to put millions of people out of a job, it warrants some investigations!
VC creates little wars of attrition in every industry and calls it "disruption" but it mostly pulls the money out of workers' pockets.
And if the FTC chair is not agreeable, they will be threatened by said lobbyists and eventually be fired.
If this sounds far-fetched, it is exactly what happened to Gail Slater, then-head of the DOJ's antitrust division and her deputies in 2025 over HPE’s bid to acquire Juniper.
Wall Street Journal archive link: https://archive.ph/IMer9
I predict they’ll be forced to install an “ombudsman” in the data cleaning / training team, so Trump can inject propaganda and filter out science. (As has been done to many US news outlets already).
Also, they will somehow each put >> $1B into his personal checking account, and hope presidential pardons cover bribing the president after the next few elections.
"Gail Slater" is not a democratically elected person of any kind, and exists as a function of the executive, and hence of the president's policies. Insofar as the DOJ's anti-trust's leaders depart from the will of the elected president, it is that leader to be fired and replaced. Or else: what ever was the point of electing a president?
There's nothing in principle wrong in a president disagreeing with the execution of his executive powers, delegated to Gail, and hence firing him. Indeed, if that were not the case, the election of a president could never change the operation of the executive, making the election pointless.
If you disagree with the anti-trust decision, the issue isn't with the political mechanism by which it was over-ruled, but with the election of that president.
Suppose a president was elected that you voted for, that you agreed with was blocked by one of his employees... are you really trusting the hiring process of one of his predecessors?
No, obviously.
> you could say that congress has delegated "judicial and legislative" powers to the executive, whose will is embodied in a democratically elected president.
Bullshit. No, you cannot say that. “The non-delegation doctrine is a constitutional principle that Congress cannot delegate its legislative powers to another branch of government or to private entities.”
You get two downvotes for lies, one for each post.
However, this isn't the mainstream view -- but a radical departure of several hundred years of mixed-power agencies. See, eg., archetypally, The Fed. A wide variety of federal agencies are mixed powers, esp. regulation of businesses by the executive which is a legislative (administrators make rules) and judicial power (administrators decide if they apply). This is uncontroversial, I know of no view on this which denies this claim.
There is nothing in my comment which can be "a lie", because its offering a theory of government which the original commenter lacked. Its not clear what theory of government is supposed to enable an executive anti-trust office with the power to intervene without a court, that isnt subject to presidential oversight.
People down-voting because they disagree with the theory of government offered is just as confused. The point of HN is to reply to something you disagree with, if offered in good faith, not to down-vote it.
>“Review all Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigations commenced under the previous administration to ensure that they do not advance theories of liability that unduly burden AI innovation.”
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americ...
Should this be the way it happens? No
Is it? Yes
The main thing I’ve seen recently is people learning how the world works then being shocked when it’s nothing like what is sold publicly
I am legit curious though: what changed specifically in your information gathering process that revealed these things?
For example pretty much everything happening now has been well described by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn specifically about American politics since the 1960s. I mean similarly for the entire black community and don’t forget Martin Luther King was killed because he was trying to organize sanitation workers.
Chris Hedges has been reporting about the state of things daily for two decades now. Similarly for Jacobin magazine.
Ron Paul (whatever you think of him) was talking explicitly about this corruption in the context of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the bail out of the banking market in 2008.
Ross Perot famously described how Nafta was a big sellout to the multinational corporations and would devastate US industry - on stage at the 1992(?) presidential debate and everybody just made fun of him because he was short and had slightly larger ears because he was an older guy.
The blatant nature of it now and complete complicity of large swaths of the government in the corruption are a level that has never been seen before. The Teapot Dome scandal involved the equivalent of tens of millions of present day dollars. The actions of the president alone now are what would have been considered dozens of individual career-ending scandals only a couple generations ago.
You’re pointing at failed projects that may or may not have corruption(I’d like to see the receipts and from a mouth other than nick shirley) compared to explicit, I’m taking this money.
Or the IRS deal, or 1000 other in the air open corruption
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-09-16/la-homel...
https://calmatters.org/housing/homelessness/2026/09/la-homel...
It's so crazy how politicized fraud has gotten. Diehard Dems offhandedly dismiss Nick Shirley and DOGE even though all they look for is proof of fraud. If someone is doing that for free, why on earth would you want to stop or dismiss it before any evidence or reporting has been delivered? There's no shortage of it from either side, why defend the scummy parts of your party vs trying to root it out?
You understand what I mean by blatant right? Like this shit you linked didn’t have advertisements.
I dismiss Nick Shirley because he crows about corruption that was already being prosecuted as somehow being novel and the few bits I’ve listened to from him honestly made me think he might be a bit slow.
I dismiss DOGE because it accomplished next to nothing, if anything, lied about its accomplishments, and helped Musk get rid of shit that was against his private goals. DOGE was also corruption. Saying all they did was “… look for is proof of fraud” is factually incorrect.
Do you do things without expecting something of benefit in return e.g. work?
Humans are conditioned to be like this. Govt indeed cares what you can do to extend its power and reach.
Not rocket science.
Thats why Ive never understood people who resist - you will be far better off in assisting and getting ahead of it to try and shape it. Then you MAY have a chance. Resisting it? Youre just delaying the inevitable I'm afraid.
Btw I've already accepted my role as an assister. Haters come at me. See you on the other side!
https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/us-government-regulat...
Of course, this story also points towards how people sometimes get confused. Most opportunities companies have to be unethical are complex, so if you're not already inclined to trust a company, it's easy to come up with reasons to distrust any claims of ethical behavior they make. Maybe they didn't want to do the unethical behavior in the first place, maybe they've made up self-serving ethical standards, maybe they're just being performatively ethical as a marketing strategy and they'll misbehave when nobody's looking.
Such commentary tends to go viral, because it's easy to propose and impossible to refute in a short comment or video.
I thought that was the whole point of that Dodge vs Ford case which enshrined shareholder supremacy?
and the 2008 financial crisis: https://sunlightfoundation.com/2008/11/24/the-revolving-door...
just to name two obscure examples that had some small impact on society
if anything, your example serves to prove my point. for everything from baby formula regulatory standards to regulation of toxic pollutants being dumped untreated into water reserves, I'd much rather a robust, regulatory standard with teeth. for things in software, we're sorely lacking that which is why we have privacy breaches and gross misuse by large corporations on the regular not to mention dark patterns, behavioral manipulation, and outright gambling
And in many fields the pay gap between government and private industry is such that you won't get good people to work for the government if that means they can never again work for private industry.
I wonder if this is just self-consciously a self-dealing thing explicitly designed to block off further investigations. Clear them, then they can't be properly investigated for that activity in the future.
FTC is still mostly not compromised by industry sleeper agents. FBI is still independent also.
CAISI NIST is very compromised by EA sleeper agents. very luckily they have no law enforcement role.
Perhaps it does not need saying but if you leave it to nonprofits overflowing with industry operatives and ai blood money, you get whatever openai or anthropic want you to hear (METR report).
I wouldn’t be too surprised if some rationalist/EA folks aligned with the “AI will be a god” type of doomers have found their way into regulatory agencies
I will be shocked if I live to see a year where AI kills more people than cars do legally.
Let's not kid ourselves.
What about the price of gas?
When Trump is gone they'll forget about him. If we elect someone far-left next they'll suddenly be mega-woke. Watch.