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Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here. Trumps Middle East tour is all about AI diplomacy The U.S. enjoys its superpower status mainly because of two things: its military and its financial influence. What were seeing in Trumps tour of the Middle East this week is the rise of another lever of geopolitical power: AI. And the competition between the U.S. and China in this realm is heating up. The U.S. is becoming more focused on exporting the best U.S. AI technology to other countries. Trumps lavish reception by heads of state in the Middle East this week can be explained in part by a major policy change: The Trump Commerce Department announced plans Tuesday to rescind Bidens AI diffusion rule, which had restricted the export of the most powerful AI chips to other countries, including those in the Middle East. The removal of the chip restrictions opens big new markets for American AI chipmakers (to wit, Nvidias stock rose 6% Tuesday) and could cause an increase in global investment in new AI data centers in the Middle East. Trump announced a series of U.S.-Saudi investment deals, including a partnership between Nvidia and Humain, a newly formed Saudi AI firm backed by the kingdoms sovereign wealth fund. The plan: to build AI data centers powered by several hundred thousand of Nvidias most advanced GPUs. The change in posture couldnt be starker. During Bidens presidency, the U.S. took a more cautious approach to AI. Biden-era chip export controls were seen as necessary to protect national security and preserve Americas edge in the AI race. Many in the tech industry supported them, at least when it came to chips. Restricting access to the best hardware, as one source put it, was one lever that the U.S. can pull to maintain its lead. The result: U.S. firms like OpenAI and Anthropic had access to elite silicon, while Chinese competitors like DeepSeek were left scrambling. But the game has changed since Biden was in office. The U.S. is no longer home to the only company (Nvidia) that can supply chips powerful enough to train state-of-the-art AI models. The Chinese multinational company Huawei is now shipping the Ascend 910C, a chip that rivals Nvidias best, along with a high-end server rack, the CloudMatrix 384, that competes with Nvidias GB200 NVL72. These systems are powering research inside China and are being pushed into global markets. That has raised alarms in D.C. The Commerce Department recently warned that organizations using Huaweis Ascend chips could be violating U.S. export rules, since the chips were likely manufactured with U.S.-origin technology. But enforcement will be difficult as more countries seek alternatives or try to hedge their bets between the U.S. and China. AI models and chips offer a new way for state actors to project power on the world stage. Thats whats unfolding in the Middle East this week. The Trump administration isnt so much trying to open new markets for Nvidia as it is trying to advance American AI as the prevailing standard around the world. GOP bill would freeze state AI laws for a decade A sweeping AI regulatory ban that would prevent states from overseeing the technology for a decade has been quietly inserted into a powerful Republican tax and spending bill currently under review by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. If passed in its current form, the bill would mark a major victory for the U.S.s largest tech companies, which argue that state-level regulations threaten innovation. It would impose a 10-year freeze on any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems. For companies like Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Alphabets Google, the provision offers a way to sidestep pending or active state laws that are imposing stricter oversight than the federal government. Their pitch in recent months has been that any slowdown in AI development could allow Chinese competitors to outpace the U.S., a message thats resonating with many Republicans. Currently, these companies face a wave of state-level scrutiny. In this year alone, states have introduced at least 550 AI-related billscovering issues from deepfakes to algorithmic discriminationaccording to a tracker by the National Conference of State Legislatures. And its only May. The House committees draft bill could effectively nullify these efforts, a move that has alarmed AI safety advocates and critics of Big Tech, including leading Democrats. This is an outrageous abdication of congressional responsibility and a gift-wrapped favor to Big Tech that leaves consumers vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, said J.B. Branch, Big Tech accountability advocate at Public Citizen. This isnt leadership; it is surrendering to corporate overreach and abuse under the guise of protecting American innovation. Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts warned that the proposal will lead to a dark age for the environment, our children, and marginalized communities. Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky said the ban would allow AI companies to ignore consumer privacy protections, let deepfakes spread, and allow companies to profile and deceive consumers using AI. The bill is advancing through Congress via the budget reconciliation process, which allows certain legislation to bypass the Senate filibuster and pass with a simple majority. However, as Bloomberg reported, the provision may not survive this route, since Senate rules require that such measures be primarily fiscal in nature. Still, the proposal is offering insight into the GOPs broader stance on AI regulation. Vice President JD Vance has already cautioned that overregulation could kill the AI industrya sentiment that appears to be gaining traction among lawmakers. New Heartland/Rasmussen survey shows 60% of voters say AI companies hould pay for lost jobs A new survey from the The Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports finds that voters support the idea of AI companies paying reparations for the jobs their technology eliminates. A majority of those surveyed (62%) said that if AI advancements were to cause the elimination of millions of jobs, they would support a government program that taxes big technology companies and then uses the funds to provide every American with an income large enough to pay for basic necessities like housing, clothes, and food. The finding suggests the voting public is increasingly aware that AI could threaten their livelihoods sooner rather than laterand that a serious public discussion about the need for a universal basic income (UBI) may be around the corner. UBI is a type of social welfare program in which all people in a society receive regular, unconditional cash payments, regardless of their employment status. Adding urgency to the discussion, the World Economic Forum predicts that AI and automation could lead to the loss of 83 million jobs globally by 2027. More AI coverage from Fast Company: Elon Musks DOGE is launching a new AI retirement system. It was built under Biden Polling giant Morning Consult is using AI to help dig through survey data Anaconda wants to become the GitHub of enterprise open-source development Going AI first appears to be backfiring on Klarna and Duolingo Want exclusive reporting and trend analysis on technology, business innovation, future of work, and design? 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Heres a sentence thats likely never been seen before in human history: The 2028 Olympic Games have an official air taxi. Archer Aviation, an electric air taxi company based in California, announced that its been named the Official Air Taxi Provider for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, as well as for the Paralympic Games and Team USA. Archers electric air taxis will be zipping around the skies in Southern California during and around the Olympics, shuttling VIPs, athletes, and anyone else who books a ride around various sites in the greater L.A. region. That includes Dodger Stadium, SoFi Stadium, Hollywood, and LAX airport. Archers CEO, Adam Goldstein, tells Fast Company that when the Olympics finally do roll around in a few years, expect to see dozens of Archers Midnight aircraft quietly navigating the airspace. He also thinks its an excellent opportunity to show off some American aviation muscle. The current [presidential] administration wants to focus on things that can put America in a good light, and aviation is having a tough time right now. This will be like a bright, shining star, Goldstein says. Not only that, but Goldstein thinks itll be a great opportunity for potential customers to learn about and fall in love with air taxi technology. Its a good product. Its clean, quiet, and affordable, he says, and will also give people a needed break from L.A. traffic, which is notoriously bad. Archers aircraft will offer an alternative to helicopters, moving around the city at speeds of up to 150 miles per hour. The air taxis can carry up to four passengers (plus a pilot). If theres an event at Dodger Stadium and athletes need to get back to SoFi [Stadium] for a ceremony, that could mean sitting for two hours in traffic, Goldstein says. The air taxi trip will cut that to mere minutes. With a few years to prepare, work will commence on getting the aircraft certified, the landing zones built, and other infrastructure up and running, he says. Its a cool way to show that America has some pretty good horsepower in the aviation space,” says Goldstein.
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Christine Farro has cut back on the presents she sends her grandchildren on their birthdays, and she’s put off taking two cats and a dog for their shots. All her clothes come from thrift stores and most of her vegetables come from her garden. At 73, she has cut her costs as much as she can to live on a tight budget.But it’s about to get far tighter.As the Trump administration resumes collections on defaulted student loans, a surprising population has been caught in the crosshairs: Hundreds of thousands of older Americans whose decades-old debts now put them at risk of having their Social Security checks garnished.“I worked ridiculous hours. I worked weekends and nights. But I could never pay it off,” says Farro, a retired child welfare worker in Santa Ynez, California.Like millions of debtors with federal student loans, Farro had her payments and interest paused by the government five years ago when the pandemic thrust many into financial hardship. That grace period ended in 2023 and, earlier this month, the Department of Education said it would restart “involuntary collections” by garnishing paychecks, tax refunds and Social Security retirement and disability benefits. Farro previously had her Social Security garnished and expects it to restart.Farro’s loans date back 40 years. She was a single mother when she got a bachelor’s degree in developmental psychology and when she discovered she couldn’t earn enough to pay off her loans, she went back to school and got a master’s degree. Her salary never caught up. Things only got worse.Around 2008, when she consolidated her loans, she was paying $1,000 a month, but years of missed payments and piled-on interest meant she was barely putting a dent in a bill that had ballooned to $250,000. When she sought help to resolve her debt, she says the loan company had just one suggestion.“They said, ‘Move to a cheaper state,'” says Farro, who rents a 400-square-foot casita from a friend. “I realized I was living in a different reality than they were.”Student loan debt among older people has grown at a staggering rate, in part due to rising tuitions that have forced more people to borrow greater sums. People 60 and older hold an estimated $125 billion in student loans, according to the National Consumer Law Center, a six-fold increase from 20 years ago. That has led Social Security beneficiaries who have had their payments garnished to balloon by 3,000% over the same period, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.An estimated 452,000 people aged 62 and older had student loans in default, according to a January report from CFPB.Debbie McIntyre, a 62-year-old adult education teacher in Georgetown, Kentucky, is among them. She dreams of retiring and writing more historical fiction, and of boarding a plane for the first time since high school. But her husband has been out of work on disability for two decades and they’ve used credit cards to get by on his meager benefits and her paycheck. Their rent will be hiked $300 when their lease renews. McIntyre doesn’t know what to do if her paycheck is garnished.She floats the idea of bankruptcy, but that won’t automatically clear her loans, which are held to a different standard than other debt. She figures if she picks up extra jobs babysitting or tutoring, she could put $50 toward her loans here and there. But she sees no real solution.“I don’t know what more I can do,” says McIntyre, who is too afraid to check what her loan balance is. “I’ll never get out of this hole.”Braxton Brewington of the Debt Collective debtors union says it’s striking how many older people dial into the organization’s calls and attend its protests. Many of them, he says, should have had their debts cancelled but fell victim to a system “riddled with flaws and illegalities and flukes.” Many whose educations have left them in late-life debt have, in fact, paid back the principal on their loans, sometimes several times over, but still owe more due to interest and fees.For those who are subject to garnishment, Brewington says, the results can be devastating.“We hear from people who skip meals. We know people who dilute their medication or cut their pills in half. People take drastic measures like pulling all their savings out or dissolving their 401ks,” he says. “We know folks that have been driven into homelessness.”Collections on defaulted loans may have restarted no matter who was president, though the Biden administration had sought to limit the amount of income that could be garnished. Federal law protects just $750 of Social Security benefits from garnishment, an amount that would put a debtor far below the poverty line.“We’re basically providing people with federal benefits with one hand and taking them away with another,” says Sarah Sattelmeyer of the New America think tank.Linda Hilton, a 76-year-old retired office worker from Apache Junction, Arizona, went through garnishment before COVID and says she will survive it again. But flights to see her children, occasional meals at a restaurant and other pleasures of retired life may disappear.“It’s going to mean restrictions,” says Hilton. “There won’t be any travel. There won’t be any frills.”Some debtors have already received notice about collections. Many more are living in fear. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order calling for the Department of Education’s dismantling and, for those seeking answers about their loans, mass layoffs have complicated getting calls answered.While Education Secretary Linda McMahon says restarting collections is a necessary step for debtors “both for the sake of their own financial health and our nation’s economic outlook,” even some of Trump’s most fervent supporters are questioning a move that will make their lives harder.Randall Countryman, 55, of Bonita, California, says a Biden administration proposal to forgive some student debt didn’t strike him as fair, but he’s not sure Trump’s approach is either. He supported Trump but wishes the government made case-by-case decisions on debtors. Countryman thinks Americans don’t realize how many older people are affected by policies on student loans, often thought to be the turf of the young, and how difficult it can be for them to repay.“What’s a young person’s problem today,” he says, “is an old person’s problem tomorrow.”Countryman started working on a degree while in prison, then continued it at the University of Phoenix when he was released. He started growing nervous as he racked up loan debt and never finished his degree. He’s worked a host of different jobs, but finding work has often been complicated by his criminal record.He lives off his wife’s Social Security check and the kindness of his mother-in-law. He doesn’t know how they’d get by if the government demands repayment.“I kind of wish I never went to school in the first place,” he says. Matt Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org and https://x.com/sedensky Matt Sedensky, AP National Writer
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