Here’s How Harris, Trump Differ on AI Policy | World News

AI’s growing visibility in everyday life has made it a popular topic of discussion, but it hasn’t yet catapulted it to the forefront of American voters’ concerns. But this may be the first presidential election in which candidates are crafting competing visions for how to steer America’s leadership of a rapidly evolving technology.

We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous executive order that stifles AI innovation and imposes radical leftist ideas on AI development,” Trump’s platform says. “Instead, Republicans support AI development rooted in free speech and human flourishing.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for more detailed information.

Trump has not spent much time talking about AI during his four years in office, though he was the first to sign an executive order on AI in 2019 that directed federal agencies to prioritize research and development in the area.

Previously, tech experts had pressed the Trump-era White House to develop a stronger AI strategy that would match those pursued by other countries. In 2017, shortly before Google quietly unveiled a research breakthrough that helped lay the groundwork for the technology now known as generative AI, then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin downplayed concerns about AI replacing jobs, saying the prospect was so far in the future that it wasn’t even on my radar.

That perspective later changed when Trump’s top technology adviser told corporate leaders in 2018 that AI-driven job displacement was inevitable and that we couldn’t sit idly by, hoping the market would eventually sort it out. The 2019 order called on federal agencies to protect civil liberties, privacy, and American values ​​in the use of AI technologies, and to help workers acquire the right skills.

Trump also signed an executive order in the final weeks of his administration promoting the use of trustworthy AI in the federal government, a policy that has carried over to the Biden administration.

Then came Biden’s AI order, which used Korean War-era national security powers to police high-risk commercial AI systems but was aimed primarily at protecting government use of the technology and setting standards that could encourage commercial adoption. But unlike the European Union, the United States still lacks broad AI regulations—which would require passage by Congress.

Harris brings a deep knowledge of Silicon Valley to the White House, having grown up and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area and later serving as California attorney general, where she built relationships with several technology industry leaders, said Alondra Nelson, former director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Even before ChatGPT, Nelson led the White House effort to draft an AI Rights Act that would protect against potential harm from the technology. But it was Harris’ speech at the Global Summit on AI Safety in London that brought all those threads together and laid out for the world what America’s AI strategy is, Nelson said.

Harris said she and Biden reject the false choice that suggests we can either protect society or advance innovation. And while acknowledging the need to consider existential threats to humanity, Harris emphasized the full spectrum of risks posed by AI.

Nelson said that in some ways it opened the door to discussion about the potential risks and harms of artificial intelligence.

Vance acknowledged that there are some harmful uses of AI, but he told the Senate in July that he fears those concerns justify some preemptive attempts at over-regulation that, frankly, would only entrench the position of existing technology leaders.

Andreessen, who sits on the board of Meta Platforms, criticized a provision in Biden’s executive order that requires the government to inspect the most powerful and seemingly risky AI systems if they can perform a certain number of mathematical calculations per second.

In a podcast where our business partner Horowitz explained his support for Trump, Andreessen said he was concerned about the idea that we would deliberately restrict ourselves with burdensome regulations while the rest of the world and China watched enthusiastically.

Horowitz read aloud the RNC’s call to rescind Biden’s executive order, saying it “sounds like a good plan to me” and noting that he and Andreessen had discussed the proposals with Trump over dinner.

Trump met with another group of VCs on a video podcast in June, sharing his view that AI leadership will require massive amounts of electricity — a perspective he shared again on the RNC stage, where he said it would require twice as much electricity as is currently available in our country. It was his only mention of AI in the 92-minute speech.

Even as rhetorical differences sharpen, there are many similarities in the Trump and Biden administrations’ approaches to AI policy, said Aaron Cooper, senior vice president of global policy at BSA The Software Alliance, an organization that represents the interests of software companies including Microsoft.

Voters haven’t heard many details yet about how a Harris administration or a second Trump administration would change that.

What we’ll continue to see as technology evolves and new issues arise is that whoever is in the White House will look for ways to unleash the most good from AI while limiting the most harm, Cooper said. It sounds obvious, but it’s not an easy calculation.

First published: Jul 30, 2024 | 10:59 AM IST