Trump signs 3 executive orders to advance AI
President Donald Trump signed three new executive orders on Wednesday evening, praising the current U.S. artificial intelligence landscape while pledging to leverage federal power to make the country an “AI export powerhouse.”
Taken together, the three executive orders — signed just after the release of the administration’s National AI Action Plan — will streamline federal permitting for energy infrastructure to handle AI application computing needs; direct leadership at the Department of Commerce and the Department of State to promote the U.S.-made AI tech stack abroad; and remove biased or “woke” AI technologies from the government.
He cited the global success of leading technology companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Amazon, AMD and Google as evidence of the leading place the U.S. holds in the global AI race, saying the lack of overbearing regulations have been paramount to their success.
“When you do your best, when you work your hardest, and when you’re allowed to be free of horrible, foolish regulation –– and you can have regulation, but it’s going to be sensible, smart regulation –– there’s nobody who’s going to beat you, as we push even further into this exciting frontier,” Trump said at the “Winning the AI Race” summit hosted by All‑In Podcast and Hill & Valley Forum.
Regarding the new regulatory scheme, Trump specified that he wants to bring a “common sense” approach to copyright law and intellectual property within AI. He said a regime that would pay content providers for each iteration of their content via a given AI program isn’t “doable.”
“You can’t be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book or anything else that you’ve read or studied you’re supposed to pay for,” he said. “Of course, you can’t copy or plagiarize an article, but if you read an article and learn from it, we have to allow AI to use that pool of knowledge without going through the complexity of contract negotiations.”
Trump used the logistic challenge that copyright violations in the age of AI pose to reiterate the need for uniformity in AI regulation and law in the form of a single federal standard.
“We need one commonsense, federal standard that supersedes all states, supersedes everybody, so you don’t end up in litigation with 43 states at one time,” he said.
The administration also aims to enable the U.S. to compete with advanced Chinese AI and prevent adoption of a restrictive regulatory regime like that of the European Union, with the goal of supporting economic advancement and national security.
“From this day forward, it’ll be a policy of the United States to do whatever it takes to lead the world and artificial intelligence,” Trump said.