US President Donald Trump has said he plans to sign an executive order that will limit the ability of individual states to regulate artificial intelligence.
His announcement, posted to his social media platform Truth Social, ends weeks of speculation about the AI executive order.
“There must be only One Rulebook if we are going to continue to lead in AI,” he wrote. “We are beating ALL COUNTRIES at this point in the race, but won't last long if we are going to have 50 States, many of them bad actors, involved in RULES and the APPROVAL PROCESS.”
For all the enthusiasm and investment dedicated to AI, concerns of negative ramifications abound, including labour disruption, rising energy costs and other issues. As a result, politicians in almost all of the 50 US states have proposed various laws that place guardrails on AI.
Many of those proposals have not yet become law, but some tech companies and those who favour a less regulated approach fear a patchwork of state laws could blunt AI research and development.
Timothy Kneeland, a professor of history, politics and law at Nazareth University in upstate New York, said Mr Trump's executive order might not be easy to put into effect.
“Congress could rule that AI development and/or deployment falls within their jurisdiction as interstate commerce, and the President cannot, acting alone, dictate to states whether they can pass regulations controlling AI in their own states,” he said, adding that the executive order will probably “be litigated in the federal courts”.
Peter Yacobucci, a political science professor at Buffalo State University, told The National that although the legality of President Trump’s order is likely to be challenged, ultimately the Supreme Court seems poised to eventually uphold the policy move.
“If you asked me ten years ago whether this use of executive foreign policy power to preempt state action is valid, I would have scoffed,” Prof Yacobucci said, when asked about Mr Trump’s executive order.
“The current six-member conservative majority of the Supreme Court has shown no appetite to limit President Trump's authority,” he explained, also describing President Trump’s executive order was a “clear money grab by the administration from the frighteningly powerful and authoritarian-friendly powers that increasingly control information and its access to the market.”
Recent polls show a majority of US citizens are reticent and concerned about AI. That public sentiment poses potential problems for Mr Trump's AI goals.
“Punishing states for enacting AI safeguards only makes sense if the President’s goal is to please the big tech elites who helped pay for his campaign, his inauguration and his ballroom,” said Emily Peterson-Cassin, policy director at Demand Progress, a Washington-based non-profit grass roots activism group.
Ms Peterson-Cassin also criticised Mr Trump's AI and cryptocurrency adviser, who has in recent weeks been pushing for a pause on state AI legislation.
“David Sacks and big tech want free rein to use our children as lab rats for AI experiments and President Trump keeps trying to give it to them,” she said.
Still, Mr Trump's announcement received praise in many circles.
“States have a vital role in addressing concrete harms, but only Congress and the President can safeguard national priorities in technologies that operate at global scale,” said Neil Chilson, who was chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission during the first Trump administration and is currently head of AI policy at the Abundance Institute, a non-profit organisation that supports emerging technologies.
“The executive branch has real tools to encourage a constitutional, effective federal framework – one that protects citizens, supports our economy and advances American values while delivering the abundance AI promises.”
On the campaign trail in 2024, Mr Trump sought to differentiate himself from Joe Biden on the issue of AI, promising to repeal new regulations.
Yet those campaign promises have caused friction with some elected officials, especially when it comes to chip export policy. These critics say that Mr Trump's approach to AI could harm US national security by giving corporations too much power. In June, a controversial tax bill supported by Mr Trump included provisions that also sought to limit state AI regulations.
“It’s not too late for the Senate to take it out,” Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said of the provision at the time.
Other tech policy moves by Mr Trump have raised eyebrows. In August, he said the US government would take a 10 per cent equity stake in the US semiconductor giant Intel.
Shortly afterwards Rick Stengel, former president Barack Obama's undersecretary of state, posted on BlueSky: “Trump's strong-arming Intel for government equity is something Mao and Stalin would be proud of.”
