For enterprise executive decision-makers, the uncertain environment around AI regulation poses both significant risks and hidden opportunities, join us on Dec. 5 in Washington D.C. for a discussion delving into this.
AI is advancing at breakneck speed, but the regulatory landscape is in chaos. With the coming Trump administration vowing to take a hands-off approach to regulation, a lack of AI regulation at the federal level means that the U.S. is facing a fragmented patchwork of state-led rules – or in some cases no rules at all.
Recent reports suggest that President-elect Trump is considering appointing an “AI czar” in the White House to coordinate federal policy and governmental use of artificial intelligence. While this move may indicate an evolving approach to AI oversight, it remains unclear how much regulation will actually be implemented. Though apparently not taking on the AI czar role, Tesla chief Elon Musk is expected to play a significant role in shaping future use cases and debates surrounding AI. But Musk is hard to read. While he espouses minimal regulation, he also has expressed fear around unrestrained AI – so if anything, his role injects even more uncertainly.
Trump’s “efficiency” appointees Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have vowed to take a chainsaw approach to the federal bureaucracy that could reduce it “25%” or more. So there doesn’t seem to be any reason to expect forceful regulation anytime soon. For executives like Wells Fargo Mehta Chintan, who at our AI Impact event in January was calling out for regulation to create more certainty, this lack of regulation doesn’t make things easier.
In fact, regulation around AI was already way behind, and delaying it further meant more headaches. The bank, which is already heavily regulated, faces an ongoing guessing game of what might be regulated in the future. This uncertainty forces it to spend significant engineering resources “building scaffolding around things,” Chintan said at the time, because it doesn’t know what to expect once applications go to market.
That caution is well deserved.
