US tech giants welcome Donald Trump's new AI plan
'AI is the birthright of the country that harnessed the atom and put a man on the moon. With today's AI Action Plan, the Trump Administration has written the source code for the next American century. Palantir is proud to support it,' reads a press release from the Denver-based company, which works closely with the US government on a number of key defence and intelligence related projects.
Speaking on Wednesday, Donald Trump made clear that the plan's objective was to place America in the best position to win the AI race.
"America is the country that started the AI race — and as President of the United States, I'm here today to declare that America is going to WIN it," he said in a speech.
'NetChoice applauds the White House's AI Action Plan overall and is encouraged to see the focus on red tape reduction and investment in America's future. From unleashing energy to embracing regulatory humility and ensuring our AI systems are adopted around the world, we look forward to working with the President to usher in the Golden Age of American innovation,' said Patrick Hegder, Director of Policy at NetChoice, an industry trade group which counts Meta, Amazon and Google among its membership.
Trump's new AI plan, unveiled on Wednesday, focuses on establishing American dominance in the cutting edge technology. Reduced regulation, easier permitting for building data centers and energy infrastructure and exporting American AI stacks abroad form three key pillars of the new policy.
'The United States must meet global demand for AI by exporting its full AI technology stack—hardware, models, software, applications, and standards—to all countries willing to join America's AI alliance. A failure to meet this demand would be an unforced error, causing these countries to turn to our rivals. The distribution and diffusion of American technology will stop our strategic rivals from making our allies dependent on foreign adversary technology,' reads the plan document.
The document also pledges to counter Chinese influence in international governance bodies that deal with AI.
While industry bodies have welcomed the new AI plan, some have urged caution. The Trump Administration's plan outlines the need to correct ideological biases in AI models. However, experts point out that delivering on this front will be difficult for companies.
'I don't envy the civil servants operationalizing this: ideological bias can be in the eye of the beholder, and First Amendment considerations may complicate things. High-performing LLMs will not be able to sidestep ideologically contested territory—advising on future weather trends, for example, will require models to draw on some understanding of climate science,' writes Caleb Withers, Research Associate in the technology and national security program at the Center For A New American Security (CNAS).
Experts also point out that the Trump administration's plans to export AI technology and work closely with allies and partners is a welcome development. However, America's insistence on calling for 'dominance' creates difficulties for countries around the world.
'The US already has clear leadership or leverage at virtually every level of the AI stack, and we should obviously seek to secure and extend this advantage. But words matter, and there's a tension between publicly calling for "dominance" on the one hand, and seeking to "ensure our allies are building on American technology" on the other. We've already seen anxiety in foreign capitals about dependence on US cloud providers. This will surely continue for AI. They worry Washington's weaponization of its economic leverage in the trade domain will continue in the digital one,' writes Vivek Chilukuri, who directs the technology and national security program at CNAS
'Partnerships that pull foreign capitals into America's orbit and strike a balance between protecting their sovereignty and sensitive US technology will be more effective than expecting outright dependence,' Chilukuri adds.
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