Will an incoming Trump administration be better for AI regulation than its predecessor? The answer is likely “yes,” but that does not mean the Trump team will fully embrace free markets on AI policy.
Even before ChatGPT alerted everyone to rapid advances in artificial intelligence technology, then-President Donald Trump had already signed an executive order in 2019 to strengthen American leadership in AI. In that executive order, Trump ordered federal agencies to create standards, make available federal datasets for training, and to remove unnecessary regulation through collaborating with experts in academia and the private sector. All commendable. But a lot has changed since then.
With AI conversations now mainstream and software capable of sophisticated speech and image recognition, artificial intelligence policy now grabs a lot more attention, which makes it ripe for political pandering and overly cautious regulatory schemes that risk stifling innovation.
With rapid advancements in AI tech more apparent, President Biden issued an AI executive order of his own in 2023 that required extensive documentation, paperwork, and regulatory oversight. President Trump ran on undoing the Biden executive order and instead promoting AI that is “rooted in free speech and human flourishing.” Such sloganeering is a good sign, but it’s too soon to tell exactly how Trump will govern AI from the oval office.
But we can tell a lot by who is hired to staff the administration. As the saying goes, personnel is policy. Administration positions selections will give more insight into how AI will be managed.
Trump’s transition team includes managing director of the AI company, Scale AI, Michael Kratsios, and generally pro-market J.D. Vance advisor, Gail Slater. Both Kratsios and Slater have strong backgrounds in technology and policy with a penchant for streamlining regulations and unleashing the power of the market to advance new technologies.
Kratsios served as Trump’s chief technology officer during his first term, and was also one of the authors of Trump’s pro-market AI executive order.
Slater, on the other hand, is a Vance economic advisor from the Senate. She also served as a special advisor to Trump where she helped create his first administration’s policies on 5G, which emphasized deregulation and permitting reforms for 5G infrastructure.
These two selections together forecast a light-touch AI regulatory approach, unlike the heavy-handed, all-of-government approach in the Biden administration.
In addition to his transition team, Trump recently announced David Sacks will serve as the AI and Crypto Czar. Sacks has argued against regulating technology in its infancy, suggesting a more pro-market approach to AI innovation. While this is a good sign, in his announcement, Trump announced, “[Sacks] will safeguard Free Speech online, and steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship.” What exactly this means for AI policymaking is still to be seen—but it is likely that AI speech may become a battleground during the Trump administration.
And then there’s incoming Vice President J.D. Vance.
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Trey Price is a policy analyst with the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, visit us at www.TheAmericanConsumer.Org or follow us on X @ConsumerPal.