Musk is AI policy's giant question mark

Yes, but: Musk, who has been at Trump's right hand since his election victory, has two very different personas when it comes to AI regulation, and no one knows which of them will be whispering in Trump's ear.

Musk has been obsessed with AI doomsday scenarios for at least a decade.

• He co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and provided the initial cash for the nonprofit, all in the name of protecting the world from runaway super-intelligence.
• In 2014, he told MIT students that AI needs regulatory controls: "With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there's the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it's like — yeah, he's sure he can control the demon. Doesn't work out," said Musk.
• In August, Musk came out in support of California legislation that would impose new obligations on developers of advanced AI. The bill passed the state legislature over industry opposition, but got vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

On the other hand, Musk has also launched a crusade against what he calls "woke" AI.

• He built his new AI startup, xAI, around a commitment to abandoning guardrails against hate speech and misinformation in the name of freedom of speech.
• Musk's feud with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, rooted in a fight for control over the nonprofit's early development, now centers on Musk's complaint that OpenAI's models have a built-in liberal bias and stifle conservative views.
• Last month, in an interview with Tucker Carlson, Musk said, "I don't trust OpenAI and Sam Altman. I don't think we want to have the most powerful AI in the world controlled by someone who is not trustworthy." Over the weekend, Musk reposted that quotation and video.

Friction point: Advocates of AI caution like Max Tegmark, the AI researcher who leads the Future of Life Institute, are counting on Musk to champion a tight leash on AI in Trump's councils.

• But MAGA's "anti-woke" warriors consider Musk as an ally in their fight to keep AI free of what they see as burdensome guardrails.

Musk's new role as a key Trump adviser means that when Trump takes office on Jan. 20, this contradiction will become a practical dilemma overnight.

Case in point: As Axios reported last week, the Department of Energy is working with Anthropic to test the company's Claude models, making sure they don't give users "help" in building homemade nuclear weapons.

• This sort of research has proceeded under the umbrella of President Biden's AI executive order, which Trump is expected to quickly revoke.
• Nuclear bomb-making — like bioterrorism, financial meltdowns and network sabotage — is exactly the kind of existential AI risk Musk has long warned about.
• But the measures companies are most likely to take today to limit the risk of such outcomes look a lot like what Musk and others on the right denounce as "censorship."

Between the lines: Since Musk is now a participant in the race to build bigger, faster, better AI models as founder and investor in xAI, his stance on AI regulation may become less a matter of philosophy than of self-interest.

• It also means his involvement in AI decision-making would be deeply compromised by conflicts of interest.

Our thought bubble: "AI safety" is in the eye of the beholder.

• "Aligning" AI with human welfare has long been the preoccupation of those, like Musk, who fear super-powered AI could run amok.
• But for AI makers busy deploying error-prone AI tools on a mass scale today, "safety" looks more like blocking an AI image maker from generating revenge porn, preventing a large language model from espousing antisemitism or stopping an AI agent from making racist decisions.

What we're watching: Musk's sway with Trump is high right now. But the president-elect's favors are fickle, and there are already signs that Musk may be overplaying his hand.