Ask HN: Impact of US Elections on AI?

In my mind, it just adds one more factor to the overall "risks" side of the scale for the commercial market side of Ai as a whole. A lot of people think a significant correction is inevitable, and such a significant change in the political landscape probably is going to have an effect in the medium and long term. For the short term, I personally don't think it will make much of a difference.

The main place I can imagine changes involves laws around consumer-protection, privacy, etc. that might affect how AI models are used, but those would also need enough votes to get past a Presidential veto.

> Data centers?

Most of the datacenter stuff will continue to at the state and local level, zoning and permitting etc. Federal effects will likely be limited. For example any change in EPA rules affecting whether the companies can get special exemptions for not-so-temporary gas turbine power-plants. Of course, that needs either legislation or someone in the EPA willing to change regulations who won't get fired by Trump.

> Open source?

I doubt there'll be much movement there, because the day-to-day stuff is tied to control of the Executive branch, many tech-improvement things already fell victim to White House Republicans' orgy of destruction in 2025. [0] I doubt they'll reverse direction soon.

> Space based compute?

No change to the engineering, so still a boondoggle fantasy no matter who controls congress.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2025/03/04/nx-s1-5317569/a-federal-effic...