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After the president made A.I. dominance a top priority, tech companies changed course from a meeker approach under the Biden administration.
For just over two years, technology leaders at the forefront of developing artificial intelligence had made an unusual request of lawmakers. They wanted Washington to regulate them.
The tech executives warned lawmakers that generative A.I., which can produce text and images that mimic human creations, had the potential to disrupt national security and elections, and could eventually eliminate millions of jobs.
A.I. could go âquite wrong,â Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, testified in Congress in May 2023. âWe want to work with the government to prevent that from happening.â
But since President Trumpâs election, tech leaders and their companies have changed their tune, and in some cases reversed course, with bold requests of government to stay out of their way, in what has become the most forceful push to advance their products.
In recent weeks, Meta, Google, OpenAI and others have asked the Trump administration to block state A.I. laws and to declare that it is legal for them to use copyrighted material to train their A.I. models. They are also lobbying to use federal data to develop the technology, as well as for easier access to energy sources for their computing demands. And they have asked for tax breaks, grants and other incentives.
The shift has been enabled by Mr. Trump, who has declared that A.I. is the nationâs most valuable weapon to outpace China in advanced technologies.