(AFP) – President Donald Trump’s administration unveiled an aggressive, low-regulation strategy on Wednesday, boosting big tech’s race to stay ahead of China on artificial intelligence and cementing US dominance in the fast-expanding field. The 25-page “America’s AI Action Plan” outlines three aims: accelerating innovation, building infrastructure, and leading internationally on AI. Overall, the administration frames AI advancement as critical to maintaining economic and military supremacy, while environmental consequences in the planning document are sidelined.
“We believe we’re in an AI race…and we want the United States to win that race,” said the White House’s AI point person David Sacks in a call with reporters. Trump was expected to formally announce the plan at an event later Wednesday and sign a series of executive orders to give key components of the strategy additional legal weight.
In its collection of more than 90 government proposals, the plan calls for sweeping deregulation, with the administration promising to “remove red tape and onerous regulation” that could hinder private sector AI development. Much of that work has already been carried out through a Trump executive order repealing the AI policies of the Biden administration. The plan also asked the Federal Communications Commission to find ways to legally stop US states from implementing their own AI regulations and threatened to rescind federal aid to states that did so.
The American Civil Liberties Union warned this would thwart “initiatives to uphold civil rights and shield communities from biased AI systems in areas like employment, education, health care, and policing.” The Trump action plan also calls for AI systems to be “free from ideological bias” and designed to pursue objective truth rather than what the administration calls “social engineering agendas.” This criterion would apply to AI companies wanting to do business with the US government. A senior White House official said the main target was AI models that gave attention to diversity and inclusion concerns in programming their model output, reflecting the Trump administration’s anti-“woke” agenda.
A major focus in the plan involves building AI infrastructure, including streamlined permitting for data centers and energy facilities that would overlook environmental concerns to build as swiftly as possible. AI “challenges America to build vastly greater energy generation than we have today,” the plan said. The administration, which largely rejects international science showing a growing climate crisis, proposes creating new environmental review exemptions for data center construction and expanding access to federal lands for AI infrastructure development.
Addressing fears that AI will replace humans and create mass job losses across entire sectors, the administration’s plan says instead that “AI will improve the lives of Americans by complementing their work — not replacing it.” The strategy calls for efforts to “counter Chinese influence in international governance bodies” and strengthen export controls on advanced AI computing technology.
The plan also proposes evaluating Chinese AI models “for alignment with Chinese Communist Party talking points and censorship.” At the same time, the strategy calls on the government to champion US technology in conquering overseas markets. These plans will help “ensure America sets the technological gold standard worldwide, and that the world continues to run on American technology,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.
Critics of the plan said the policies were a gift to US tech giants that were scaling back their goals for zero carbon emissions in order to meet the acute computing needs for AI. “The AI Action Plan is yet another gift to Big Tech that clearly shows the Trump administration is again placing corporate interests ahead of the needs of everyday Americans,” said Alan Butler of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
© 2024 AFP
