On some days, it’s hard to be in the coffee shop. I was writing away when a group of five males who are about my age arrived. I’ve seen them before but don’t know them. After ordering drinks, they took the table beside me and began discussing subjects I enjoy.
For instance, they mentioned “Klara and the Sun”. Terrific book. A short summary is given. They don’t know the author’s name.
Working on my manuscript, I refrained from informing them.
“Did you lose any money yesterday?” one asked another. “There was a big crypto crime. I can’t remember the name of the company.”
I know, I know, my brain shouted, but I kept typing, venturing deeper into the novel in progress.
My coffee-shop neighbors returned to an earlier topic, AI. One said, “I think they’ll need to start labeling things made with AI.”
“Oh, yes,” another confidently replied. “That’s a given.”
I laughed to myself. I don’t think anything involving large sums of money and corporations is a given. I think that’s especially so when profits and revenues are in direct competition with public health and safety. Thinking back, I easily recall several historic incidents that repudiate that idea.
- Way back when cigarette companies paid doctors to reassure people that cigarettes weren’t dangerous.
- Remember the exploding gastanks on Ford Pintos? Ford paid a lot of money to keep that quiet, figuring that it would be cheaper to pay off the lawsuits.
- How ‘bout that time that oil and energy companies found and hid the risks and dangers of climate change?
- Purdue, the Sacklers, and the opiod epidemic early this century?
- Or what about DuPont and 3M hiding the effects of forever chemicals, Johnsons & Johnsons and the talcum powder/asbestos scandal, Volkswagen and dieselgate, or Monsanto and Roundup?
I can imagine the campaigns already, based on what I’ve seen with GMO labeling battles and Oregon Connects’ astroturf efforts here in Oregon. AI companies will run emotional ads arguing that forced labels stifle local software developers, harm tech startups, and slow down life-saving medical AI innovations.
They’ll jump on the deliberate manufacturing of ignorance and doubt, tactics corporations successfully employed before. As we’ve seen with multiple issues and challenges, the fight over AI labeling won’t be fought with facts; it will be fought by trying to convince you that facts don’t exist yet, or that a consensus about the facts doesn’t exist. It’ll be fought by convincing you that there is doubt.
Which brings us to Trump. Trump loves AI, although he wants to rename it, of course. While in office, Trump will absolutely fight to keep AI labels from being applied. Donald Trump is all for making money and dismisses values like honesty, ethics, and integrity.
So Trump will instantly denigrate any efforts to label AI content. That, I think, to Trump seems a lot like ‘woke’. And if he does, it will malign the effort for years.
I think that because of the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump claims that election was ‘stolen’ from him. No evidence of that has ever been produced. Trump often claims it’s because of voting by mail. 51% of Americans believe that election security is now a big problem in 2026. When it’s addressed by party, 83% of Republicans believe that voting by mail is now not safe.
We can argue that the polls now reflect a worry that Trump has taken steps to make voting less secure. I believe that he influences others with his lies and deceptions.
Which is the point. When someone like Donald Trump takes the stage and bellows a claim, it becomes part of our modern landscape, tainting truth, spreading doubt and confusion.
And that’s why I don’t think that we’ll ever be able to accurately label AI content.
Not till longer after Trump is gone.
