President Donald Trump signed an order aimed at thwarting state-level regulation of artificial intelligence through lawsuits and funding cuts, handing a win to tech industry leaders who\u2019ve pressed for preemption of local rules.<\/p>\n
Trump said the measure was necessary to bolster the emerging technology and counter a patchwork of state-level rules the industry worries will hamper its growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to have a central source of approval when they need approval. So things have to come to one source. They can\u2019t go to California, New York and various other places,\u201d Trump said Thursday during an event in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n
To that end, the order directs the U.S. attorney general to establish an \u201cAI Litigation Task Force\u201d with the responsibility of challenging state AI laws that are \u201cinconsistent\u201d with that policy. <\/p>\n
It also directs the secretary of Commerce \u2014 within 90 days \u2014 to consult with other officials and \u201cpublish an evaluation of existing State AI laws that identifies onerous laws that conflict with the policy.\u201d The Commerce secretary must also issue a notice specifying the conditions under which states may remain eligible for funding through the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program. <\/p>\n
Executive departments will be allowed to assess discretionary grant programs in consultation with Trump\u2019s special adviser for AI and crypto to determine whether agencies may condition such grants on states not enacting AI laws that conflict with the president\u2019s goals.<\/p>\n
Championed by White House AI czar David Sacks, the directive culminates months of lobbying by AI companies led by OpenAI and Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Google as well as venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz. Executives including Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang have warned that state laws popping up across the country risk overwhelming a nascent industry and potentially harming U.S. competitiveness with China in AI.<\/p>\n
Trump said he had consulted with numerous tech industry leaders on the order and indicated Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook, who has been visiting Washington this week, was among them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey won\u2019t be able to do this. This will not be successful unless they have one source of approval or disapproval. Frankly, you can have disapproval too, but it\u2019s one source. They can\u2019t go to 50 different sources,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
The president\u2019s order marks the latest in a series of moves he\u2019s taken to boost the AI industry since his return to the White House, including steps to make it easier to build infrastructure and increase energy supply for power-hungry data centers. He\u2019s also sought to promote the export of American technology to global markets, including with his blessing for Saudi Arabia to buy advanced chips for the kingdom\u2019s state-backed AI venture.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is pass\/fail versus China,\u201d Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who attended the signing, told reporters. \u201cWe have the lead, we\u2019ve got to maintain it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The White House pivoted to the executive order after Trump officials and Republican lawmakers failed to include similar legislation preempting state AI laws in a must-pass defense bill earlier this month. A comparable measure pausing state AI laws was rejected by the U.S. Senate in July on a 99-1 vote.<\/p>\n
Alexandra Givens, president of the Center for Democracy & Technology, said in a statement on Thursday night that the \u201cexecutive order is designed to chill state-level action to provide oversight and accountability for the developers and deployers of AI systems, while doing nothing to address the real and documented harms these systems create.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cStates that take steps to protect their residents from such harms should not be subject to threats of legal attacks,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Congressional Struggle<\/p>\n
U.S. lawmakers have struggled for years to pass AI legislation, and there\u2019s currently no federal standard governing the technology, leaving local authorities to fill that void.<\/p>\n
The text of the order says that the administration must act with Congress to ensure that there is a \u201cminimally burdensome national standard \u2014 not 50 discordant State ones,\u201d and directs the White House advisor on AI and crypto and the assistant to the president for science and technology to \u201cjointly prepare a legislative recommendation establishing a uniform Federal policy framework for AI that preempts State AI laws that conflict with the policy set forth in this order.\u201d<\/p>\n
As AI becomes a central part of daily life, taking on roles such as assessing job applications, identifying criminal suspects, handling medical claims and creating images nearly impossible to distinguish from genuine photos or video, state lawmakers have expressed eagerness to impose some rules of the road. Trump\u2019s order will complicate those efforts, putting any state passing legislation into potential conflict with the White House.<\/p>\n
Tech companies have largely opposed state-level regulatory efforts, particularly in California and New York, that would hold companies accountable for harms caused by AI products like chatbots. Trump and his allies have touted the AI boom as a plus to the U.S. economy, even as it poses political challenges, including voter concerns that data centers are spiking energy bills and fears that the technology will spur job losses.<\/p>\n
After a proposed draft of the order circulated widely in November, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, assailed the effort, saying the White House was trying to \u201cshield big corporations from taking basic steps to prevent potential harm from AI.\u201d The order also pits Trump against some governors from his own Republican Party, including Ron DeSantis of Florida and Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas.<\/p>\n
Woodhouse, Birnbaum and Lowenkron write for Bloomberg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump signed an order aimed at thwarting state-level regulation of artificial intelligence through lawsuits and funding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2007,7,9,8,50777,4005,3758,9355,5409,6283,50776,12304,1970,2429,1519,50778,2805],"class_list":["post-91904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-ai","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-central-source","tag-conflict","tag-harm","tag-order","tag-policy","tag-president","tag-state-ai-law","tag-step","tag-technology","tag-thursday","tag-trump","tag-u-s-competitiveness","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}