Hello and welcome to Eye on AI! In this edition:
Yesterday, I recapped my day at “Winning the AI Race”—an event hosted by the All-In podcast and the Hill & Valley coalition—where Silicon Valley’s elite descended on Washington’s stately Andrew Mellon Auditorium to celebrate President Trump’s new AI Action Plan, which he signed onstage after a surreal afternoon that fused podcast spectacle with public policy. The only non–Silicon Valley touch seemed to be the sea of suits that replaced the typical tech uniform of hoodies and sneakers (though Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang refused to budge from his usual leather jacket and black jeans).
Trump’s speech before scrawling his signature went on so long that I missed my Amtrak train back to New Jersey. While I waited for the next one, I had plenty of time to reflect on the day—which, without question, was a victory lap for the so-called AI “accelerationists,” now led in Washington by David Sacks, Trump’s appointed AI and crypto czar and co-host of the All-In podcast.
Pushing Silicon Valley’s pro-speed, pro-scale ideology
Sacks—along with senior White House AI policy advisor Sriram Krishnan and Office of Science and Technology Policy director Michael Kratsios, both of whom were also present at the event—has been front and center pushing Silicon Valley’s pro-speed, pro-scale ideology, advocating for rapid deployment and minimal regulation of AI.
For the “accelerationists”—those who believe the rapid development and deployment of artificial intelligence should be pursued as quickly as possible—innovation, scale, and speed are everything. Over-caution and regulation? Ill-conceived barriers that will actually cause more harm than good. They argue that faster progress will unlock massive economic growth, scientific breakthroughs, and national advantage. And if superintelligence is inevitable, they say, the U.S. had better get there first—before rivals like China’s authoritarian regime.
AI ethics and safety has been sidelined
This worldview, articulated by Marc Andreessen in his 2023 blog post, has now almost entirely displaced the diverse coalition of people who worked on AI ethics and safety during the Biden Administration—from mainstream policy experts focused on algorithmic fairness and accountability, to the safety researchers in Silicon Valley who warn of existential risks. While they often disagreed on priorities and tone, both camps shared the belief that AI needed thoughtful guardrails. Today, they find themselves largely out of step with an agenda that prizes speed, deregulation, and dominance.
Whether these groups can claw their way back to the table is still an open question. The mainstream ethics folks—with roots in civil rights, privacy, and democratic governance—may still have influence at the margins, or through international efforts. The existential risk researchers, once tightly linked to labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, still hold sway in academic and philanthropic circles. But in today’s environment—where speed, scale, and geopolitical muscle set the tone—both camps face an uphill climb. If they’re going to make a comeback, I get the feeling it won’t be through philosophical arguments. More likely, it would be because something goes wrong—and the public pushes back.
Also: I hope you’ll check out my first-ever Fortune cover story –a deep dive into Meta’s superintelligence spending spree, with a massive bet by Mark Zuckerberg on new chief AI officer and Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang. Also, don’t miss the marvelous feature from Jeremy Kahn about how Aravind Srinivas turned Perplexity into an $18 billion would-be Google killer. All part of our upcoming Most Powerful People issue!
With that, here’s the rest of the AI news.
Sharon Goldman
sharon.goldman@fortune.com
@sharongoldman
- How Walmart, Amazon, and other retail giants are using AI to reinvent the supply chain—from warehouse to checkout. Read more
- Meet the legacy players and upstarts using AI to reinvent the energy business. Read more
- AI isn’t just entering law offices—it’s challenging the entire legal playbook. Read more
- How a bulldozer, crane, and excavator rental company is using AI to save 3,000 hours per week. Read more
- AI is already touching nearly every corner of the medical field. Read more
AI IN THE NEWS
Nvidia AI chips worth $1B smuggled to China after Trump export controls. According to a Financial Times investigation, more than $1 billion worth of Nvidia’s advanced AI chips—including the banned B200—flooded into China over a three-month period through a thriving black market, despite tightened U.S. export controls under Trump. The Financial Times uncovered a network of Chinese distributors reselling the chips—often in ready-made server racks—from U.S. suppliers like Supermicro, with no indication those companies were aware of the diversion. Although it’s legal to receive restricted chips in China, the sellers and shippers are violating U.S. rules. The workaround includes using Southeast Asian countries and secondary suppliers to funnel in high-end hardware, showing how U.S. controls may be generating inefficiency and profits for middlemen, rather than stopping China’s AI ambitions. In a response to CNBC, Nvidia said that datacenters built with smuggled chips are a “losing proposition” and that it does not support unauthorized products.
Elon Musk says he is bringing back video-sharing app Vine in AI form. Elon Musk announced on X that the social network would revive the beloved short-form video app Vine “in AI form,” nearly nine years after it was shut down. While details remain scarce, the move aligns with Musk’s long-teased interest in bringing Vine back—and could position the platform to capitalize on the rise of AI-generated content, which currently excels at short-form formats like Vine’s original six-second clips.
Walmart is overhauling its approach to AI agents. Walmart is streamlining its sprawling AI agent strategy, consolidating dozens of independently built tools into four unified “super agents,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Each will serve a core group—customers, employees, engineers, or suppliers—by bundling multiple behind-the-scenes agents into a single, simplified interface. The shift comes after growing internal complexity led to a fragmented user experience. “It became very clear that we could dramatically simplify,” said CTO Suresh Kumar, noting that the change reflects both widespread adoption of AI at Walmart and strong executive backing.
FORTUNE ON AI
Exclusive: Who covers the damage when an AI agent goes rogue? This startup has an insurance policy for that – by Sharon Goldman
Google’s AI Overviews are cutting off the oxygen to the web – by Beatrice Nolan
Elon Musk says Tesla will start adding vehicles it doesn’t directly own into its robotaxi network next year – by Jessica Mathews
How Walmart, Amazon, and other retail giants are using AI to reinvent the supply chain—from warehouse to checkout – by Sharon Goldman
Meet the companies using AI to reinvent the energy business – by Alexandra Sternlicht
AI CALENDAR
July 26-28: World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), Shanghai.
Sept. 8-10: Fortune Brainstorm Tech, Park City, Utah. Apply to attend here.
Oct. 6-10: World AI Week, Amsterdam
Oct. 21-22: TedAI San Francisco.
Dec. 2-7: NeurIPS, San Diego
Dec. 8-9: Fortune Brainstorm AI San Francisco. Apply to attend here.
EYE ON AI NUMBERS
88%
That's how many Gen Z study participants said they were confident in detecting AI-generated content, according to a new study by from Socialtrait, an AI-powered consumer insights platform. Eighty-four percent of millennials said the same. But even tech-savvy participants admitted their real success rates are actually often closer to 40%.
The study authors said that this gap—that is, Americans significantly overestimate their ability to detect AI-generated misinformation—is likely to make people more vulnerable to digital manipulation. Yet, younger Americans, despite being the most confident and digitally engaged, are also the most frequent sharers of AI-generated content. Eighty-seven percent of millennials and 80% of Gen Z respondents reported sharing AI-created material.
