I’ll bite… An executive order is literally just that, an order from the executive to their employees.

So let’s say that you work at McDonalds, and the CEO (Chief EXECUTIVE Officer) of McDonald’s issues an order that the milkshake machine must be cleaned hourly. You do have to clean the milkshake machine hourly or risk disciplinary action. But if you work at Wendy’s you don’t have to give two shits about what the CEO of McDonald’s wants w.r.t. milkshake machines.

Similarly, the president of the USA is the head of the executive branch of the federal government, and an executive order is just a directive to federal employees and federal agencies (i.e. people actually employed directly by the federal government). The president can’t make some random citizen or company in this country (with extremely limited exception) do jack shit.

IN THIS CASE, the EO references Title VII of the Defense Production Act

Section 708 of the DPA authorizes the President to consult with representatives of industry, business, financing, agriculture, labor, and other interests to provide for development of voluntary agreements and plans of action to help provide for the national defense. A voluntary agreement is an association of private interests, approved by the Government to plan and coordinate actions in support of the national defense. Under Section 708, Participants in a voluntary agreement are granted relief from antitrust laws . Voluntary agreements enable cooperation among business competitors to plan and coordinate measures to increase the supply of materials and services needed for military and homeland security purposes. For example, a voluntary agreement could be used to enable cooperation among suppliers of critical materials and services to plan and carry out emergency preparedness, response, and recovery activities.

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I’ve highlighted the critical parts for you.

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IMHO, more people need to at least watch the schoolhouse rock video about how bills become laws before voting. The only way to impose a new rule in this country (e.g. something every private company would actually have to follow) is to pass a bill through congress + senate + signed by president (or veto overrided) AND then stand up to judicial review (e.g. supreme court doesn’t bounce it for violating the constitution)

I’m not who you responded to, but it does seem that there’s a lot more fear-mongering about the executive order in this thread than actual problems. This is clearly aimed at basic regulation of huge AI. Lots of stuff in here is fairly common sense - help people determine what’s created purely by machine vs what isn’t so that they’re not misinformed or defrauded, reform some data scraping stuff to protect privacy and keep an AI model from getting too much unnecessary personal info in its training (like, it probably doesn’t need your home address to train, not that I don’t imagine a use for such a thing, but that would need to be regulated).

Read the bullet points, it’s not that long, and it’s not that hard to understand. People are running around this thread talking about “Download and start torrenting everything OMG!”. That’s just… not a reasonable or rational take on the substance of the order. I would be concerned about things like the casual mention of predictive policing (though, again, regulation is needed to prevent it, so it’s gotta be mentioned as something to be regulated).

But if you’re an open source hobbyist or enthusiast, your reaction to this should be a resounding “meh”. If you’re a researcher or professional, I think I’d pay a lot more attention, but I’m not qualified to tell you whether or not the substance of it is a problem for your field.