Trump’s All In on AI

February 20, 2025

By Jim Towey

Give Big Tech and Big Artificial Intelligence credit. No sooner was Donald Trump elected than they took off their blue caps and put on MAGA red ones.

Mark Zuckerberg started things off with his mea culpa that Facebook/Meta had lied to everyone, censored content as directed by the West Wing, punished those who opposed the Biden party line, and did what was necessary to keep on growing numbers and profits. Zuckerberg’s public conversion on censorship, and his media tour to establish his new bona fides as a defender of free speech, were masterful.

Bending the knee

And by the time of Trump’s inauguration, all the gods of technology and AI had lined up. Literally. Remember the scene inside the Rotunda of the Capitol? There was Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, among others, assembled as the Hallelujah chorus, together on bended knee to curry favor with the new sheriff in town. Switching allegiances, professing a new creed? No problem.

The chorus of tech leaders standing nearby Trump on Monday would have been an unlikely scene during his first administration. In 2016, many of the same people voiced concerns about Trump’s ascendance in the political world.

Now that Elon Musk has renovated the White House residence and turned it into a duplex, Big Tech and AI can rest easy. They have found the favor of a newly-elected president who is all-in on what they are doing. His embrace of AI and the money he intends to throw at it has the same feel to me of his predecessor’s grandiose “green revolution” initiative that spent hundreds of billions of dollars and badly underperformed. We are one month into the new administration. Can something be said about the elderly, Social Security and Medicare, and the caregiving crisis ahead?

AI and people

Last week, Vice President J.D. Vance went to Paris, France to deliver an AI speech to world leaders. His speech was such an AI wish list that I thought Musk might have hacked into the teleprompter.

“The Trump administration will maintain a pro-worker growth path for AI so it can be a potent tool for job creation in the United States… AI, I really believe will facilitate and make people more productive,” he said.

Really? What kind of new jobs will be created in this make-believe world where only upsides exist? If the goal of AI is to surpass human intelligence and ability and become the smartest and fastest in the room, under what conditions, exactly, would human beings and their relatively puny abilities be preferred? What jobs might they do that would be worth having?

Vance assured the world that AI “is not going to replace human beings. It will never replace human beings. I think too many of the leaders in the AI industry, when they talk about this fear of replacing workers, really miss the point. AI, we believe, is going to make us more productive, more prosperous, and more free.”

Free to do what?

Mr. Vice-President, AI already has replaced human beings. And free to do what? Free to be idle, unemployed, not needed, not necessary? Sure, AI will deliver efficiencies and be more cost effective than mere mortals. But at what cost to humanity? The elderly don’t fit into the AI architecture.

Vance cautioned that if America restricts the development of AI, it will “unfairly benefit incumbents in this space,” meaning China and the usual suspects. We’ve heard that justification with the arms race and green energy and look where that got us.

The Vice President gets credit for being forthcoming and honest. He was blunt. He said that an estimated $700 billion will be spent on AI in the year Trump’s term ends, with half of that invested in the United States.

More handwringing, please

And he warned that “the AI future will not be won by handwringing about safety,” adding that “the Trump administration will ensure that AI systems developed in America are free from ideological bias and never restrict our citizens’ right to free speech.”

That seems like good news to the government regulators and censors just let go from the Biden administration. They may get their jobs back after all.

I wish I could share the Trump administration’s sunny optimism about AI. Vance promised that America’s workers would “reap the rewards with higher wages, better benefits, and safer and more prosperous communities.” That promise sounds like a “chicken in every pod.”

Vance closed by promising vigilance about safety concerns. But his message was full-speed ahead, a ready-fire-aim strategy on AI. “(W)e must focus now on the opportunity to catch lightning in a bottle, unleash our most brilliant innovators, and use AI to improve the well-being of our nations and their people.”

Well, good luck trying to catch this lightning in a bottle safely. Me? I’ve got some handwringing to do. Not just about AI, but about the need for priority policy treatment for the elderly and disabled and their caregivers. The AI in aging is all we’ve got so far.

(The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Aging with Dignity and/or its Board of Directors.)