The White House has released what it calls
Regulation, deregulation and standards
Among many other things, the plan calls for the Department of Commerce, in cooperation with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to convene a broad range of public, private and academic stakeholders to accelerate the development and adoption of national standards for AI systems and to measure how much AI increases productivity at realistic tasks in those domains. The administration believes this will encourage AI adoption.
"Many of America's most critical sectors, such as healthcare, are especially slow to adopt due to a variety of factors, including distrust or lack of understanding of the technology, a complex regulatory landscape, and a lack of clear governance and risk mitigation standards. A coordinated federal effort would be beneficial in establishing a dynamic, 'try-first' culture for AI across American industry," said the document.
The plan also calls for guidelines and resources for federal agencies to conduct their own evaluations of AI systems for their distinct missions and operations and for compliance with existing law, as well as supporting the development of the science of measuring and evaluating AI models. Further, it would promote the development of the science of measuring and evaluating AI models in an effort led by NIST at DOC, the Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and other federal science agencies.
At the same time, the administration also believes regulations need to be rolled back. The plan recommends working with federal agencies to identify, revise or repeal regulations, rules, memoranda, administrative orders, guidance documents, policy statements and interagency agreements that are felt to be unnecessarily hindering AI development or deployment, as well as soliciting feedback from businesses and the public at large about current regulations that hinder AI innovation and adoption, and work with relevant federal agencies to take appropriate action.
Meanwhile, in order to encourage the building of data centers, the plan would weaken certain environmental regulations, like the Clean Water Act, expedite environmental permitting, and make federal lands available for construction.
It also recommended a review of all Federal Trade Commission investigations commenced under the previous administration to ensure they do not advance theories of liability that unduly burden AI innovation.
AI regulation in the future could come from the establishment of regulatory sandboxes or AI Centers of Excellence where researchers, startups and established enterprises can rapidly deploy and test AI tools while committing to open sharing of data and results. These efforts would be enabled by regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Securities and Exchange Commission, with support from the Commerce Department through its AI evaluation initiatives at NIST.
The plan also seems concerned about ensuring models conform with certain values. Specifically, the administration wants to revise the NIST AI Risk Management Framework to eliminate references to misinformation, diversity, equity and inclusion, and climate change. Further underscoring the point, it also wants to update federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model developers who ensure their systems are perceived by the administration as objective and free from top-down ideological bias.
Training and labor
The plan also contains a number of labor and training-related measures in recognition of widespread anxiety about mass job loss in the wake of AI.
Under the plan, the Treasury Department would release guidance clarifying that many AI literacy and AI skill development programs may qualify as eligible educational assistance under Section 132 of the Internal Revenue Code, given AI's widespread impact reshaping the tasks and skills required across industries and occupations. In certain situations, this will enable employers to offer tax-free reimbursement for AI-related training and help scale private-sector investment in AI skill development.
Meanwhile, the Department of Labor would leverage its available discretionary funding for the rapid retraining for individuals impacted by AI-related job displacement. Paired with this would be clarifying guidance to help states identify eligible dislocated workers in sectors undergoing significant structural change tied to AI adoption, as well as guidance clarifying how state Rapid Response funds can be used to proactively upskill workers at risk of future displacement.
The plan would also support the creation of industry-driven training programs that address workforce needs tied to priority AI infrastructure occupations as well as expand early career exposure programs and pre-apprenticeships that engage middle and high school students in priority AI infrastructure occupations.
Market development
The plan also suggests measures to grow and mature the financial market for the kind of large-scale computing power generally needed by startups and academic institutions developing AI technologies. Right now such arrangements often involve long-term contracts, which are beyond the budgetary reach of most. The administration would like to increase access in a similar manner as other financial offerings.
"America has solved this problem before with other goods through financial markets, such as spot and forward markets for commodities. Through collaboration with industry, NIST at DOC, OSTP, and the National Science Foundation's (NSF) National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot, the Federal government can accelerate the maturation of a healthy financial market for compute," said the plan.
The plan also calls for working with tech companies to increase access to private sector computing, models data and software resources for the research community.
This is part of the larger push to encourage open-source and open-weight models that are freely available by developers for anyone in the world to download and modify. Such models, according to the document, have unique value for innovation as they can be used without being dependent on the model provider. That would also allow those with sensitive data to use AI without sending information to the vendor's servers.
"We need to ensure America has leading open models founded on American values. Open source and open-weight models could become global standards in some areas of business and in academic research worldwide. For that reason, they also have geostrategic value. While the decision of whether and how to release an open or closed model is fundamentally up to the developer, the federal government should create a supportive environment for open models," said the plan.
Other topics covered include combating deep fakes and other synthetic media, science funding, cybersecurity and trade. Overall, the administration said winning the "AI race" is essential for maintaining U.S. power and influence.
"Whoever has the largest AI ecosystem will set global AI standards and reap broad economic and military benefits," said the document. "Just like we won the space race, it is imperative that the United States and its allies win this race."
