On July 23, The White House released “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” in accordance with President Donald Trump’s January executive order on Removing Barriers to American Leadership in AI.
In a statement, The White House said the plan identifies more than 90 federal policy actions across three pillars, accelerating innovation, building American AI infrastructure and leading the U.S. in international diplomacy and security.
PJ Tabit, principal economic policy analyst at research organization The Conference Board, sat down with MobiHealthNews to discuss the AI action plan and how, while the plan advances several priorities that are aligned with the administration's broader agenda, it leaves many of the most contested questions in AI policy unresolved such as those related to intellectual property and the role of state-level regulation.
MobiHealthNews: What do you think was the goal of the AI Action Plan?
PJ Tabit: It is a statement of priorities for the administration related to AI. Since the beginning of the administration, going back to January, they have said that the goal is American AI dominance, human flourishing and economic growth.This is really an articulation of what the White House's priorities are related to AI.
MHN: What are some of the good policies in the plan, and what policies do you think are missing that should be in it?
Tabit: The plan overall aligns with the administration's broader goals not even specific to AI.
So, things like deregulation, their opposition to DEI initiatives, countering Chinese influence, [those] are administration priorities beyond AI.
The plan is organized around three pillars, the first of which includes a deregulatory focus to accelerate innovation by removing barriers that the administration believes are hindering AI development.
The second piece is around building AI infrastructure. So, data centers, energy production are the focus there.
The third is leading in international diplomacy and security. A lot of focus there is around national security issues. The issue there is importing American tech.
So, it lays out that framework but also does not address some of the more contentious areas in AI policy, such as the role of states in regulating AI, the right balances between state regulation and federal regulation, and then also intellectual property.
There really is not a real focus on that issue in the plan.
The president did talk about both of those issues separate from the plan in a tech industry event around the release of the plan but they are not in the plan.
MHN: What regulatory barriers do you envision?
Tabit: It remains to be seen exactly what the regulation will look like and to the extent the government plans to regulate AI. The plan is just a set of recommendations.
It does not propose any specific regulatory language and we would need to see what agencies actually propose to see exactly how it will be implemented .
But certainly both in the plan and other venues the administration has communicated that a plan is to take a very light regulatory approach to AI so I would expect that.
MHN: Do you think that the White House’s AI Action Plan is beneficial?
Tabit: I think that it is certainly helpful to get a view into what the administration's thinking is.
Whether this will be good or bad for AI development, whether it will actually achieve the stated goals of the administration, whether it is the best thing for industry and consumers, all of that remains to be seen, but certainly getting a clearer sense of what the administration's views are is helpful.
This is not a comprehensive framework for how to regulate AI. This is an incremental step that shares some of the administration's views but does not answer some of the big questions that will ultimately need to be resolved by some combination of regulatory action and congressional legislation and court decisions as well. Certainly, there is a lot more to be seen in terms of what AI policy in the U.S. looks like.
