By Ryan Lovelace The Washington Times Thursday, November 14, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to undo President Biden’s artificial intelligence agenda, replacing an emphasis on safety with a new emphasis on freedom for the booming new technology.

Mr. Biden signed an AI executive order last year, created the AI Safety Institute and recently issued new guidance to shape national security officials’ adoption of AI. The president has put concerns about safety and reining in potential abuses front and center in forming AI policy.

Mr. Trump has pledged for nearly a year to trash Mr. Biden’s AI executive order, and AI policy experts expect the president-elect will deliver. Mr. Trump favors AI policy that does not restrict expression nor market innovation.

“When I’m reelected, I will cancel Biden’s artificial intelligence executive order and ban the use of AI to censor the speech of American citizens on Day One,” Mr. Trump said in a December rally in Iowa.

The Republican Party enshrined Mr. Trump’s push in its 2024 platform, signaling in July where a GOP-led Congress will go next year.

“We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology,” the platform said. “In its place, Republicans support AI Development rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing.”

R Street Institute senior fellow Adam Thierer said he fully expects Mr. Trump to repeal and replace Mr. Biden’s AI executive order.

Mr. Thierer, who researches tech and innovation at the free market think tank, believes Mr. Trump will put new constraints on federal agencies’ AI-related regulations as well.

“I also expect there to be an even stronger focus in the new administration on how to extend America’s AI might as a geopolitical technological advantage over China,” Mr. Thierer said in an email. “Another key thing to watch will be the likely connection between AI policy and energy policy priorities, with Trump looking to capitalize on his party platform’s promise to boost ’reliable and abundant low-cost energy’ options, which are vital to meeting AI’s growing energy demands.”

Mr. Thierer said to anticipate a lot of pushback from Republicans on “woke AI” concerns, which he defined as the prioritization of diversity, equity and inclusion priorities through tech policy during Mr. Biden’s term in office.

Fueling the shift is the fact that the leading technologist leveraging AI and who publicly positions himself against “woke” politics aligned with the political left is Elon Musk, now a close adviser to the president-elect.

While Mr. Trump has said Mr. Musk will help lead a new effort on government efficiency, there are calls for Mr. Musk to oversee the incoming Trump administration’s AI agenda, too.

Americans for Responsible Innovation, a group co-founded by former Democratic Rep. Brad Carson, wants Mr. Musk appointed as special adviser to the president on AI. The group is gathering signatures in support of creating the new advisory position for Mr. Musk.

Americans for Responsible Innovation Senior Vice President Satya Thallam said Mr. Musk knows what it takes to develop safe AI.

“There’s no one better positioned to help the Trump administration navigate this new technology,” Mr. Thallam said in a statement. “This is someone who has both pioneered AI advancement and consistently sounded the alarm about AI’s potential risks.”

Separate from the executive branch’s AI posture and personnel, doubt persists in Washington about enduring AI policy crafted through legislation.

Democrats on Capitol Hill are not giving up the pursuit of new rules for AI codified into law. Sen. John Hickenlooper, Colorado Democrat, said Wednesday that he wants rules to label AI-generated content and expose deepfakes.

“If it’s an audio, you’d have a little bell, a little chime can go off, but some standard approach that we make transparent what is AI and what is not,” he said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event.

Sens. Brian Schatz, Hawaii Democrat, and John Kennedy, Louisiana Republican, introduced legislation to label AI-made content last year, but the approach has stalled amid concerns about practicality and free speech.

“If you’re talking about moving in a direction of setting up a tool that rings a bell every time something happens that’s invalid or somebody says something invalid, in Congress all we’d hear is bells ringing,” Rep. Garret Graves, Louisiana Republican, told Mr. Hickenlooper at the CSIS event.

Uncertainty also surrounds several aspects of AI policy where the Trump administration does not appear to have a definitive point of view. For example, Mr. Thierer said it is not clear how Mr. Trump’s White House views things such as “open source AI,” the status of state-level AI regulations that clash with federal policies, and AI-related industrial policy proposals.

Mr. Trump may also not discard every AI policy crafted during Mr. Biden’s tenure. John Beieler, the U.S. intelligence community’s AI chief, told The Washington Times in July that the spy agencies were looking to standardize approaches so that it would hold up under whoever occupied the White House next year.

• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at [email protected].