Trump’s comments on AI Safety and Clean Energy aren’t necessarily helpful for the EPA, but they can protect the public’s interests

The head of a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which Musk has claimed he will join the Trump administration in, would work to gut the entire US regulatory system. If he could hit the departments that manage it harder, he’d be able to promote artificial intelligence safety. Robusto says Musk may spare agencies key to AI safety policy like the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) from cuts to federal spending. If Musk imposes mass layoffs on the government to save money, the government may use more Artificial Intelligence to make up for it.

Musk has been a leading critic of OpenAI, a company he cofounded but more recently has distanced himself from and made into an opponent. Shortly after the release of ChatGPT, he signed onto a letter calling for a moratorium on the development of more advanced generative AI models in order to implement safeguards. Critics say his stances are largely self-interested, however, since he also runs his own AI company, xAI.

His combination of safety advocacy and technical expertise could be valuable to the development of responsibleai governance with proper guardrails.

Environmental advocates are already concerned about Trump’s plans for the EPA. “We can meet demand for data centers without scrapping EPA rules to clean up dirty power plants and cut climate pollution,” Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in a statement responding to Zeldin’s appointment. The EPA protects clean air, water, and public health and that is what we will hold the administrator accountable for.

Zeldin will “ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards,” Trump posted on Truth Social yesterday.

Trump complained about environmental impact studies in an interview with Joe Rogan that was aired on October 25th. The environment was always bad. They could slow a project down for up to 15 years. Remember, it costs more to do things that are clean.

Zeldin has also faced off with environmental groups over the years. Zeldin has been given an abysmal 14 percent lifetime score by the League of Conservation Voters. He has accepted more than $269,000 from the oil and gas industry and close to $1.5 million from real estate while running for Congress, according to the nonprofit OpenSecrets that tracks campaign contributions. Fossil fuel lobbyists were picked by Trump to lead the EPA.

Some environmental advocates are holding out hope that they’ll be able to salvage long-standing environmental rules with Zeldin, rather than seeing a worst-case scenario outlined in Project 2025 that would all but dismantle the EPA. Zeldin voted to slash the EPA’s budget by 25 percent in 2017, which could have led to the layoffs of more than 3,000 staff positions.

Data centers, which tend to gobble up more energy when used for training AI, have become a hot-button environmental topic. The data center’s power use has not changed much despite gains in energy efficiency. Data center power demand could increase 160 percent by the year 2030 because of waning efficiency gains and the popularity of artificial intelligence. The US is home to more data centers than any other country, and that could lead to more pollution from the power sector.