Five Things to Know from Today’s White House AI Action Plan
By Paul Steidler: This morning, the White House released its much-anticipated AI Action Plan in concert with a January 23 Executive Order. It is an important document for looking ahead and should be read in the context of numerous announcements the White House has already made, as well as related important AI issues it is addressing. Five key takeaways follow.
90 near-term recommendations. The plan identifies 90 Federal policy actions the Trump Administration will take in the coming months. These span three areas: Accelerating Innovation, Building American AI Infrastructure, and Leading in International Diplomacy and Security.
Private sector-driven innovation. There are no calls for large federal appropriations that would be funded by taxpayers. Instead, AI investments will continue to be made and driven by the private sector, such as the entire $90 billion of investments announced by the President last week in Pennsylvania.
Important role for NIST. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), within the U.S. Department of Commerce, will have a crucial role in many areas. For example, NIST will “conduct research and, as appropriate, publish evaluations of frontier models from the People’s Republic of China for alignment with Chinese Communist Party talking points and censorship.”
Emphasis on protecting and helping workers. There is considerable discussion about the need for this, the initiatives the administration has already taken in this regard, and that there will be an emphasis on additional programs in the near-term, including tuition assistance.
Watching states that overregulate AI. The Office of Management and Budget and federal agencies are to “consider a state’s AI regulatory climate when making funding decisions and limit funding if the state’s regulatory regimes may hinder the effectiveness of that funding.”
The AI Action Plan does not address what the country’s policy should be on sending high-powered GPU chips to other countries, an issue that the Commerce Department and others in the government are in the throes of addressing and should address soon.
Similarly, it does not weigh in on copyright law and disputes, which are increasingly being waged in the courts. It is important to have clarity on both issues soon, indeed sooner than the issues that are months away from implementation, on which the report is focused.
The AI Action Plan provides an important roadmap by which to benchmark and track America’s AI progress, the prompt and successful development of which is essential for us to remain the world’s economic and military leader.