President Trump released an AI “action plan” on Wednesday that outlines the administration’s vision for achieving global dominance in artificial intelligence.
The report, and a pair of executive orders, mark a further split from Biden administration policies, which favored restrictions against exports of AI chips and steps to ensure AI was not used to spread misinformation.
However, the new rules do come with limitations for AI developers that build “ideological biases” into their systems, which have yet to be defined by the administration.
“There is a global competition now to lead in artificial intelligence, and we want the United States to win that race,” David Sacks, chair of the president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, said during a briefing on the report.
Sacks said the report builds on President Trump’s executive order on AI issued during the first week of his second term in office by taking away “unnecessary barriers” to AI adoption put in place by the Biden administration.
Keys to the action plan include removing federal regulations that the administration believes hinder AI, promoting the build-out of AI data centers, and exporting US-made AI around the world.
The Wednesday rollout includes three new executive orders signed by the president designed to fast track permitting approvals to build data centers, promote international exports of AI models and require AI models used by the government to be ideologically neutral and refrain from promoting so-called “woke” principles.
Trump discussed the plan and new orders during a speech at a Wednesday event titled “Winning the AI Race,” organized by White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks and his co-hosts on the “All-In” podcast.
“From now on,” Trump said, “the U.S government will deal only with AI that pursues truth, fairness, and strict impartiality.”
President Trump holds a signed executive order on AI in the Oval Office of the White House on Jan. 23. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo) ·Reuters / Reuters
Trump said the new rules would foster federal standards for AI development.
“We also have to have a single federal standard. Not 50 different states regulating this industry of the future,” Trump said.
Two constitutional law scholars who talked with Yahoo Finance said it is doubtful the “woke AI” measure will withstand legal scrutiny.
“If you sanction software that is liberal, but not software that is conservative, the challenge will be that the executive order is content-based discrimination,” said UC San Francisco School of Law professor Rory Little.
President Trump with AI and crypto czar David Sacks at the White House Digital Assets Summit on March 7. (Allison Robbert for the Washington Post via Getty Images) ·The Washington Post via Getty Images
“I don’t even know how you tell if software is liberal or conservative,” Little said, adding that the First Amendment protects intellectual property as forms of speech that the government may not single out for punishment.
But the order’s constitutional viability may not matter in the short term for companies like Amazon (AMZN), Anthropic (ANTH.PVT), Google (GOOG), OpenAI (OPAI.PVT), Microsoft (MSFT), and Perplexity (PEAI.PVT), all of which are vying to supply AI systems to the government.
Even if the order is met with legal challenges, AI developers might not have time to wait out a court solution.
“A lot of people are trying to make deals with the Trump administration, so they view these executive orders not as law, but as the opening bid in a negotiation,” Little said.
“If you’re an AI company, like Google, you’re probably going to do your best to negotiate something that permits whatever you want to do to go forward,” he added. “And you could care less what atmospheric politics might look like, so long as you’re making money on your software.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Tuesday at a Federal Reserve banking conference in Washington, D.C., that his company now has lots of government work.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during a discussion at the Federal Reserve on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) ·ASSOCIATED PRESS
“We are increasingly working with the government to roll out our services to lots of government employees,” Altman said.
If such an AI order is challenged, a court fight is likely to resemble those in multiple ongoing lawsuits against two other DEI-focused executive orders issued by Trump during his first days back in office.
Those earlier orders directed all federal contractors to certify that they do not operate DEI programs in violation of anti-discrimination laws. They also shuttered government offices and employment positions focused on DEI.
David Coale, a partner with the law firm Lynn Pinker Hurst & Schwegmann, said the executive orders get into an area called the “unconstitutional conditions” doctrine, which prohibits the government from conditioning a grant on the exercise of constitutional rights.
“This [type of] proposal goes too far,” Coale said, explaining that tying the eligibility to an AI’s liberal bias presents “serious First Amendment issues.”
Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on X @alexiskweed.
