Yesterday, I recapped my day at Winning the AI Racean event hosted by the All-In podcast and the Hill & Valley coalitionwhere Silicon Valleys elite descended on Washingtons stately Andrew Mellon Auditorium to celebrate President Trumps new AI Action Plan, which he signed onstage after a surreal afternoon that fused podcast spectacle with public policy. The only nonSilicon 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).

Trumps 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 daywhich, without question, was a victory lap for the so-called AI accelerationists, now led in Washington by David Sacks, Trumps appointed AI and crypto czar and co-host of the All-In podcast.

Sacksalong 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 eventhas been front and center pushing Silicon Valleys pro-speed, pro-scale ideology, advocating for rapid deployment and minimal regulation of AI.

For the accelerationiststhose who believe the rapid development and deployment of artificial intelligence should be pursued as quickly as possibleinnovation, 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 firstbefore rivals like Chinas authoritarian regime.

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 Administrationfrom 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 folkswith roots in civil rights, privacy, and democratic governancemay 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 todays environmentwhere speed, scale, and geopolitical muscle set the toneboth camps face an uphill climb. If theyre going to make a comeback, I get the feeling it wont be through philosophical arguments. More likely, it would be because something goes wrongand the public pushes back.

Also: I hope youll check out my first-ever Fortune cover story a deep dive into Metas superintelligence spending spree, with a massive bet by Mark Zuckerberg on new chief AI officer and Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang. Also, dont 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, heres the rest of the AI news.

Sharon Goldman
[email protected]
@sharongoldman

Fortune recently unveiled a new ongoing series, Fortune AIQ , dedicated to navigating AIs real-world impact. Our third collection of stories explores how businesses across virtually every industry are putting AI to workand how their particular field is changing as a result.

  • How Walmart, Amazon, and other retail giants are using AI to reinvent the supply chainfrom warehouse to checkout. Read more
  • Meet the legacy players and upstarts using AI to reinvent the energy business. Read more
  • AI isnt just entering law officesits 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 Nvidias advanced AI chipsincluding the banned B200flooded 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 chipsoften in ready-made server racksfrom U.S. suppliers like Supermicro, with no indication those companies were aware of the diversion. Although its 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 Chinas 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 Musks long-teased interest in bringing Vine backand could position the platform to capitalize on the rise of AI-generated content, which currently excels at short-form formats like Vines 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 groupcustomers, employees, engineers, or suppliersby 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

Googles AI Overviews are cutting off the oxygen to the web by Beatrice Nolan

Elon Musk says Tesla will start adding vehicles it doesnt 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 chainfrom 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 gapthat is, Americans significantly overestimate their ability to detect AI-generated misinformationis 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.