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With Tesla (TSLA-1.61%) and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk solidifying his role in the incoming Donald Trump administration, another tech leader is looking to stay in the president-elect’s good graces.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook parent Meta Platforms (META+3.50%), hopes to play “an active role in the debates that any administration needs to have about maintaining America’s leadership in the technological sphere,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said in a briefing with journalists Tuesday.
Clegg emphasized the role of U.S. tech policy, according to the Financial Times, particularly given the rapid development of artificial intelligence and its role in both cybersecurity and global competition.
He added that it is “tremendously important given all the geostrategic uncertainties around the world, and particularly the pivotal role that AI will play.”
On the campaign trail, Trump promised to roll back the Biden administration’s 2023 executive order on AI, which set goals to establish the U.S. as a leader in the safe and ethical use of AI.
According to the Biden administration, that order has resulted in requirements for major AI developers to share their safety test results with the federal government and directed federal agencies to establish guardrails for the use of AI systems. The U.S. AI Safety Institute has also started testing Anthropic and OpenAI’s models, and the Department of Defense has conducted a pilot study to use AI as a defense for government software.
According to the 2024 Republican platform, the party will seek to repeal the “dangerous” executive order that it claims hinders AI innovation and “imposes Radical Leftwing ideas” on AI development.
While Zuckerberg hasn’t remained as close to Trump’s elbow as Musk, he has visited the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Meta said in a statement shared with the FT that Zuckerberg was “grateful” for the invitation and that “[i]t’s an important time for the future of American innovation.”
Zuckerberg and his company have had a complicated relationship with the federal government and regulators. In an August letter, Zuckerberg said he regretted not pushing back against calls from the federal officials to remove COVID-19 related posts from Facebook and Instagram.
“We’re acutely aware — because users quite rightly raised their voice and complained about this — that we sometimes over enforce, we make mistakes and we remove or restrict innocuous or innocent content,” Clegg said.
For its part, Meta has splurged on AI this year. In its third-quarter earnings report, the company raised capital expenditure estimates for 2024 to between $38 billion and $40 billion.
The company said in late October that it expects “significant capital expenditures growth in 2025” and “significant acceleration in infrastructure expense growth next year.”
“First, it’s clear that there are a lot of new opportunities to use new AI advances to accelerate our core business that should have strong ROI over the next few years,” Zuckerberg said on an Oct. 31 call with analysts. “So, I think we should invest more there.”
“And second, our AI investments continue to require serious infrastructure, and I expect to continue investing significantly there too,” he added.
— William Gavin contributed to this article.
