Is President Trump right to block state AI laws? And should libertarians support federal AI regulation?

We're going to answer those questions today. Welcome to the Reason Roundtable. This is your

Libertarian Review of News and Culture from the editors of Reason Magazine.

I'm your host, Peter Souterman, and today I am joined by my colleagues, Catherine McGuward, Matt Welch,

and returning special guest, Liz Wolfe.

Thank you so much for being on this show.

So last week, Trump signed this executive order.

It blocks states from regulating artificial intelligence.

This is what AI companies wanted, but it's definitely going to be challenged in court.

Catherine, how do you think about this and how do you square it with a kind of general

libertarian desire for federalism?

I am enjoying, as always, the kooky scramble that Trump doing stuff causes these days.

And so we have on the one hand, it looks like Trump did this maybe mostly to quote

unquote beat China.

I don't know.

He doesn't like when China wins.

And it seems like China might be winning AI question mark.

So therefore, he signed this.

On the other side, didn't he also decide to sell them our super awesome AI chips, basically at the same time?

Don't ask questions.

Okay.

So then second, what's happening is the people who want states to be able to regulate AI.

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