AI #170: Lack of Executive Order
type: NewsArticle
description: The White House indefinitely postponed its anticipated AI executive order, with David Sacks and others intervening to effectively kill the directive except for work on securing critical infrastructure, leaving U.S. AI policy to remain "maximally ad hoc." Meanwhile, Illinois SB 315, a variation of California's SB 53 and New York's RAISE Act that adds a third-party auditing requirement, is set to become law. The development marks a continued absence of coordinated federal AI regulation as states move forward with their own frameworks.
date published: 2026-05-28 14:20:49+00:00
date modified: 2026-05-28 14:34:41.831950+00:00
language: en
is accessible for free: true
article body: 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 the way you would actually engineer such outcomes. The Pope, I am told, instead really does think you can just ask the people to individually choose to not follow incentives. There is a section below with more on this. A note on post frequency: For many months, I posted five times a week, and used any lulls as an opportunity to post non-AI things or split off subtopics. I have another project right now, and AI is in a relative news lull (I know, but yes, this is a lull), so instead I am using this as an opportunity to rest a bit. I will evaluate in July whether to return to a full all-weekdays post schedule. Google claims its AI agents built an operating system with a single prompt and $916. Kapoor and Narayanan investigate, and find this basically press release puffery but with a grain of truth, even if the prompt was thousands of line…
publisher: Web Pulse
keywords: ai-policy, ai-ethics, artificial-intelligence
mentions: David Sacks
mentions: Illinois SB 315
mentions: California SB 53
mentions: New York RAISE Act
mentions: Magnifica Humanitas
mentions: Pope
citation: CreativeWork