Only time will tell if the president’s order achieves its stated purpose of checking state laws that threaten to stymie innovation.
President Donald Trump announced his executive order, « ensuring a national policy framework for artificial intelligence », on Thursday. While the order self-admittedly does not create a national regulatory framework for the burgeoning technology, the reactions of both AI pessimists and AI optimists suggest that it is a meaningful step toward stymieing state regulation.
Before Thanksgiving, Trump took to Truth Social to call on congressional republicans to put a federal AI standard in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Trump’s plea did not fall on deaf ears, but was ultimately of no avail. While restrictions on advanced AI chip sales did not make it into the House version of the NDAA—a boon for American GPU manufacturers Nvidia, AMD, and for the growth of the American semiconductor industry—neither did a federal AI regulatory framework.
Trump’s Thursday executive order says that « a carefully crafted national framework can ensure that the United States wins the AI race », but such a framework does not yet exist.
