The News
The US Department of Homeland Security published new guidance Thursday on the “safe and secure” use of AI in critical sectors like transportation, defense, and energy.
The document stems from an executive order President Joe Biden signed last year — the longest such order in US history — which one lawyer described as “the mother of all AI legislation.” The document includes voluntary best practices for companies to implement AI safely, and prevent its misuse. It may be the last AI-related guidance released before incoming President-elect Donald Trump, who is widely expected to take a far more hands-off stance on AI, is inaugurated.
SIGNALS
Trump may take a deregulatory approach to AI
While President Joe Biden has generally approached AI with a focus on “safety” over speed, by contrast, President-elect Donald Trump is expected to undo Biden’s executive order, NBC News wrote. The 2024 GOP platform described the order as “dangerous,” adding it “hinders AI Innovation and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology.” This also may be one area where Trump’s unofficial adviser Elon Musk — who owns AI startup xAI — may have influence, and could try to shape policy in his favor, The Verge wrote. Musk could also potentially receive preferential treatment in obtaining coveted energy resources to power AI data centers to run his models, Semafor’s Reed Albergotti noted.
Strong AI exports, not tariffs, could give the US an edge over China
To win the tech race with China, the Trump administration may need to embrace competition, rather than control, AI policy expert Matthew Mittelsteadt argued in his newsletter Digital Spirits: Strong AI exports would boost revenue, drive innovation, and give the US an economic edge, while also reducing China’s influence, as other nations will preferentially buy and use American technology. By contrast, Trump’s proposed hiked tariffs on Chinese products would raise prices for tech companies and squeeze their corporate budgets, a contraction that “could absolutely make or break the United States’ ability to invest in, make use of, and compete with artificial intelligence.”
OpenAI proposes bigger role for government in growing AI
OpenAI, whose CEO Sam Altman helped craft the new DHS guidance, this week released an “Infrastructure Blueprint,” detailing what it believes the US needs to stay ahead in the increasingly heated AI race with China. The approach “imagines an aggressive role for the US government in promoting the technology’s development,” FedScoop reported, including creating AI economic zones to encourage data center construction and tapping US Navy expertise to build small modular nuclear power plants — an idea Semafor’s Reed Albergotti said was especially intriguing. “While the construction of nuclear power plants in the US has stalled, the Navy has kept building small ones to power submarines,” he wrote. “Why not build reactors similar to those of power data centers?”