With an introduction that combines the quasi-erudition of Big Tech utopianism and just enough dipshit to sound like Donald Trump, the White House unveiled an action plan on artificial intelligence that is part magical thinking and part policy statement. It all adds up to one bottom line: “Let Big Tech do what it wants, and things will be great.”

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The tech companies have repeatedly demonstrated that they possess no ethics that would prioritize public interest over profit; the Trump administration has no credibility about anything; and Congress has largely been reduced to performance art, promising for the last eight years that it will finally “rein in tech.” Thus, the AI action plan, like so many plans of the current administration, boils down to fuck around and find out (FAFO).

Unlike major transformative undertakings of the past—the action plan cites the space race—no technology has had the potential to crawl into every aspect of social, economic, and political life as AI. Data runs the world, which means those who control the data run the world. Hence, the promise of what AI could do for society rests entirely on the guardrails and oversight which the industry rejects out of hand and the Trump administration believes are unnecessary.

As one obvious example, a whole section of the plan discusses “empowering American workers,” which is boilerplate for any administration except that most predictions about AI include job loss at unprecedented scale. To navigate this fresh terrain—either to mitigate job loss or address the consequences of job loss at scale—requires leadership that is intelligent and gives a damn about people. But this administration is neither intelligent nor cares about anyone, including the people who voted for them.

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