I’ve been seeing posts everywhere claiming that Trump might have used ChatGPT or other AI tools to come up with his tariff strategy. Apparently when people ask the AI the same questions about trade policy, they get results that look very similar to what was announced. This has me wondering if we’re actually seeing artificial intelligence influence major government decisions now. Has anyone else noticed this pattern? I’m curious if there’s any real evidence behind these claims or if it’s just people making connections that aren’t really there. It seems pretty wild to think that AI could be helping shape economic policy, but given how much these tools are being used for everything else, maybe it’s not that surprising. What do you all think about the possibility of AI being used in high level political decision making?
The connection between AI outputs and policy decisions might show something totally different than direct influence. I’ve seen that when you give ChatGPT specific economic constraints and goals, it keeps landing on the same solutions - because those solutions are just established economic principles. Trade policy works within known frameworks no matter who’s calling the shots. The real question isn’t whether AI influenced the policy, but whether human advisors and AI systems are both using the same limited playbook of options that actually work. With current global trade dynamics and domestic manufacturing issues, there’s only so many approaches that make sense. What looks like AI influence could just be reality - when you face identical constraints and goals in complex systems, effective solutions tend to look pretty similar.
Look, I’ve worked with AI systems for years and this screams confirmation bias.
ChatGPT gets trained on massive datasets full of economic theory, policy papers, and trade discussions spanning decades. Ask it about tariffs and you’ll get standard economic approaches that’ve been around forever.
Tariffs aren’t revolutionary. Politicians and economists have debated the same strategies for generations. If ChatGPT suggests similar policies, it’s because those ideas were already documented in its training data.
I’ve seen this in tech projects where stakeholders think we’re using AI to make decisions. Really we’re just following established best practices that happen to match AI recommendations. The AI learned those practices from human experts originally.
Without actual evidence of AI in the policy process, you’re connecting dots that aren’t related. Similar outputs don’t prove similar inputs.
I’ve worked in government contracting, and policy development moves way slower than people think. These tariff discussions probably started months before any public announcements. Teams of economists, trade specialists, and policy advisors who’ve studied this stuff for decades were already working on it. The similarity between AI outputs and actual policy is probably simpler than it seems: they’re both pulling from the same sources. When you ask an AI about trade policy, it references the same academic papers, historical trade wars, and economic models that real advisors would use. The timing alone makes direct AI influence unlikely - that’s just not how government works. Policy proposals get vetted by tons of stakeholders long before implementation. More likely, both human advisors and AI systems reached similar conclusions because effective trade strategies follow predictable patterns based on economic fundamentals.
This feels like a huge reach. Trump’s team had real trade experts and economists working on this stuff years before ChatGPT was mainstream. Protectionist policies aren’t new - we’ve been debating them for decades. Just because an AI gives similar recommendations doesn’t mean there’s some conspiracy or secret AI puppet master behind the scenes.