Alexandr Wang, the CEO of Scale AI, has taken out a full-page advert in The Washington Post asking the Trump administration to take a position extra in AI.
Wang, who attended Trump’s inauguration on Monday like many different tech CEOs, posted a replica of the advert on X, which reads “Dear President Trump: America should win the AI War.”
In the complete letter printed on-line, Wang explains that the US ought to take 5 broad steps to win what he considers an “AI conflict” towards China.
Scale, whose core enterprise is knowledge labeling and processing for AI tasks at giant organizations, was valued at $13.8 billion final 12 months.
Wang desires the U.S. authorities to emulate tech giants by spending extra on knowledge and compute. He additionally recommends the U.S. evaluate its personal rules to make sure there’s loads of AI-related jobs sooner or later.
Wang additional requires making federal businesses “AI-ready” by 2027, launching an “aggressive” plan for reasonable electrical energy that may be consumed by AI-centric knowledge facilities, and provided concepts on implement some AI security measures.
Scale may gain advantage from a minimum of a few of these suggestions, like a surge in U.S. authorities spending on knowledge. Scale already counts the U.S. authorities as a buyer and is reportedly a part of plans for a U.S. protection startup consortium.
More pleasant rules and inspiring AI-related jobs may assist Scale as properly, because it depends closely on contract employees, a number of of whom have lately filed lawsuits alleging they’re misclassified.
Wang, nevertheless, has framed the suggestions as a part of an effort to maintain the U.S. forward of China in AI. “We are in a brand new sort of technological arms race,” his letter states. “The Chinese authorities is investing in AI at an unprecedented tempo.”
Chinese fashions like DeepSeek have been getting consideration for his or her sturdy efficiency on sure trade benchmarks. Wang’s letter says China is now catching as much as the U.S. after being a minimum of a 12 months behind, feedback echoed by different AI leaders.
But Wang’s framing of US-China AI competitors as a “conflict” has raised concern from some.
“This is a horrible framing – we aren’t at conflict. We are all on this collectively and if we make AI improvement right into a conflict we’re more likely to all die,” posted Emmett Shear, the ex-Twitch CEO who was briefly OpenAI’s CEO in 2023.
How the Trump administration responds stays to be seen. So far, President Trump’s essential motion on AI has been to revoke his predecessor’s Executive Order on AI, which created steerage for firms to assist appropriate flaws and biases of their fashions.
