“AI #170: Lack of Executive Order” by Zvi

Last week ended on a cliffhanger of sorts. What's in the Executive Order coming later today? What will be in the Magnifica Humanitas? The Executive Order was postponed indefinitely, likely cancelled entirely except for work on securing critical infrastructure. David Sacks and others intervened to kill it, and American AI policy will continue to be maximally ad hoc. Instead, we got Illinois SB 315, which is to be signed into law. It is a variation on California's SB 53 and New York's RAISE Act, while adding a third party auditing requirement. The Magnifica Humanitas was revealed early in the week. I did an extensive readthrough, and have some follow-up commentary here to clear up some things I interpreted incorrectly and add richer context. It too ignores elephants in the room, not discussing AGI or existential risk and calling on people to ignore their incentives and instead do the right thing by prioritizing common good, especially access to good jobs and an end to war. What I now believe I centrally misunderstood is that I interpreted this as a call to action, to use law and regulation to make this happen, because obviously that is [...] ---Outline:(02:01) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(03:19) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility(05:41) Do The Math(09:08) Huh, Upgrades(10:07) On Your Marks(11:31) Get My Agent On The Line(12:21) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(21:36) Copyright Confrontation(21:49) Cyber Lack of Security(23:54) Overcoming Bias(25:14) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer(26:49) Unprompted Attention(27:02) They Took Our Jobs(30:34) Get Involved(32:28) Introducing(32:40) In Other AI News(34:37) Show Me the Money(36:46) Show Me The Compute(37:13) Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble(38:53) People Just Say Things(43:37) OpenAI PACs Just Say Things(43:51) Quiet Speculations(46:33) State AI Regulation Levels Up(48:37) The Quest for Sane Regulations(49:14) White House Attempts To Cripple American AI Industry(52:11) Our Offer Is Nothing(58:55) Chip City(59:11) Greetings From The Department of War(01:00:36) Marc Andreessen Just Says Things(01:09:13) So Sayeth The Pope(01:15:33) Rhetorical Innovation(01:23:01) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult(01:24:06) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone(01:26:04) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone(01:27:19) Everyone Is Confused About Consciousness(01:33:10) The Lighter Side --- First published: May 28th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cRapLxTByFqF5xxdN/ai-170-lack-of-executive-order --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.