5 days ago
How President Trump's 'AI Action Plan' May Impact Corporate Boards
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The July 23 release of President Trump's comprehensive 'Winning the AI Race: America's AI Action Plan' presents technology opportunities and challenges for corporate leadership.
On the one hand, the Plan commits the Administration to the admirable goal of expediting American efforts to establish global leadership in artificial intelligence and its critical infrastructure.
On the other hand, its plan to achieve this goal by limiting what it regards as burdensome government regulation may prompt corporate leaders to compensate by adding new, more comprehensive internal risk-related guardrails.
The Plan encompasses over 90 Federal policy actions across three policy pillars – 'Accelerating Innovation', 'Building American AI Infrastructure', and 'Leading in International Diplomacy and Security' – that will be rolled out by the Trump Administration over time.
The pillars focus on exporting American AI; promoting the rapid buildout of data centers; removing 'onerous' Federal regulations that hinder AI development and deployment and updating Federal procurement guidelines to ensure that artificial intelligence models procured by the Federal government prioritize truthfulness and ideological neutrality.
The New York Times described the Action Plan as 'opening the door for companies to develop the technology unfettered from oversight and safeguards', while assuring that A.I. be free of 'partisan bias.' The perception of the Plan is that in order for America to achieve global pre-eminence in AI, its development must not be hindered by a broad regulatory scheme. This represents a change in approach by the United States and reflects a departure from the approach of other governments (e.g., the European Commission) to implement regulatory standards for AI.
Simultaneously with the rollout of the Action Plan, President Trump signed three related Executive Orders: one prohibiting the federal government from purchasing AI tools it perceives as ideologically slanted; another accelerating certain AI infrastructure projects and a third relating to the exporting of American-developed AI products.
Corporate boards are likely to follow two parallel paths in responding to the AI Action Plan.
One path could involve thorough conversations between the board and management concerning the impact of the Plan on the company's AI strategy. These conversations will likely focus on establishing internal mechanisms to monitor the roll-out of the Plan, and on identifying opportunities under the Plan to enhance the company's approach to AI acquisition and deployment.
The other, more challenging path could also involve board/management conversations, but on the opposite end of the spectrum ‒ whether the limited commitment to federal AI regulation could create increased liability and reputational exposure for the company.
Any such conversation would be grounded in an honest self-evaluation of the current degree of board proficiency in artificial intelligence related matters. Is the board prepared to accelerate and monitor the company's use of AI? In such an exercise, the National Association of Corporate Directors' 2024 Blue Ribbon Commission Report, 'Technology Leadership in the Boardroom' might be an effective measuring stick.
The more direct conversations about liability and risk would evaluate the need to enhance the board's AI oversight mechanisms and whether to add specific review standards in order to assure reliability, safety and trust. In addition, the board may consider whether additional oversight may be necessary in order to responsibly manage issues historically associated with 'irresponsible use' of AI (e.g. societal harms such as fraud, discrimination, bias, and disinformation; anti-competitive behavior, and the displacement and disempowerment of workers).
The board will also likely consult with its advisors on whether to expand compliance programming to address possible government enforcement policies regarding the objectivity of AI systems in general, and their possible treatment of such controversial topics as diversity, equity and inclusion, climate change and misinformation.
The board's pursuit of this parallel path will most certainly require an investment of time, review, evaluation, internal discussion and external consultation beyond that which it may already be contributing to AI.
The ultimate governance question arising from the AI Action plan is whether boards will find it necessary to compensate for the absence of comprehensive AI regulation with increased internal oversight ‒ and whether it can do so without creating an expensive internal bureaucracy.
