- Business Insider spoke with five experts about what a Trump and Harris presidency would bring to AI.
- Neither has given details of their AI policies, but Trump would likely ease regulations.
- Both Harris and Trump are backed by Big Tech, which could affect their regulatory agendas.
With Leaders of Silicon Valley inserting themselves – and their wallets – into this year’s presidential election, questions remain about how Vice President Kamala Harris And former president Donald Trump would take on AI regulation if they win the White House in less than a week.
Business Insider spoke with five experts with experience in government and the private sector about how each administration could regulate AI, which is evolving at breakneck speed and influencing nearly every factor of American life.
“More attention should be paid to what applicants are doing in the field of AI, just because it’s a very important field,” said Darrell West, a senior fellow at the University’s Center for Technology Innovation. nonpartisan Brookings Institute, to Business Insider. “But neither Trump nor Harris have been very detailed in defining their policies. Neither has released significant position papers on the subject, so it’s a bit of a black box in terms of how each administration would manage AI.”
“It’s a shame that we’re a week away from the election and we don’t have a detailed AI policy agenda from either candidate,” said John Bailey, a nonresident senior fellow at the group. conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute.
Experts predict that, generally speaking, Trump will take a more deregulatory approach to technology and AI, while Harris will continue the Biden administration’s regulatory approach. There remains, however, a certain degree of uncertainty with one or the other candidate, as each juggles the desires of their private sector supporters.
Candidates differ on a recent key directive on AI.
Between calling the AI “very dangerous” and share AI-generated images from Taylor SwiftTrump hasn’t given many details about how he would regulate the technology. However, he pledged to roll back a vast executive order that President Joe Biden published in October 2023 regarding AI regulation.
The sweeping order generated significant political backlash, with some conservatives arguing that certain provisions constituted government overreach and would hinder innovation. Supporters generally argue that regulation is necessary to ensure safety in the industry.
“The sticking point was really the idea that we were going to create this big monolithic regulation on AI, not that we would create regulation at all, because there already is regulation around AI in these regulated sectors” , said Nicholas Reese, an assistant professor in New York. York University and Director of Emerging Technologies at the Department of Homeland Security from 2019 to 2023.
“It included some perspectives and communities that helped shape it, but it didn’t reflect a lot of center-right thinking,” Bailey told BI.
In late October of this year, the Biden administration issued a national security memorandum directing the Pentagon and intelligence agencies to step up their use of AI. Earlier this month, Biden’s team released guidance on how federal agencies should use AI effectively while addressing risks appropriately.
Megan Shahi, director of technology policy at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, called the executive order “a good first step.” Oren Etzioni, founder of a nonprofit fighting political deepfakes and former CEO of the Allen Institute on AI, thinks the order is well-intentioned, but potentially too harsh.
“I think regulating rapidly evolving technology is a challenge, and I would say it’s well-intentioned, but the road to regulatory hell is paved with good intentions,” Etzioni said.
Trump would take a more hands-off approach to AI – but his immigration policies could end up impacting the sector.
Trump has made his promise to get rid of order in the Republican Party platform, which says in part: “We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous executive order that hinders AI innovation and imposes radical left-wing ideas on development of this technology.”
Other than that, Trump hasn’t given many details about his plans for AI Policy and his campaign did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment. Reese anticipates he will also repeal the new national security memorandum, but he and Bailey said it is unclear what he will replace it with. The uncertainty could, Reese said, sow confusion among innovators.
“I haven’t seen any other concrete policies on this, which probably tells me they’re not going to come up with a comprehensive AI strategy,” Shahi said. She said Trump hasn’t committed to much regulation in any direction, and Etzioni described him as “pro-deregulation.”
As president, Trump didn’t spend much time talking about AI, but signed his own executive order in 2019 that directed federal agencies to prioritize artificial intelligence. research technology — Bailey described the order as “overlooked and underappreciated.”
Reese worked at the Department of Homeland Security during the final year of the Trump administration.
“When I worked under the Trump administration, there was actually quite a bit of activity, they were very active,” he said. “And especially in AI, they were doing things that would be quite difficult to argue about, like creating a list of reliable principles for reliability and AI.” He called this administration’s approach “progressive.”
Etzioni said the former president’s impact on AI extended beyond narrow policy and the same could apply to another Trump term. In particular, he believes that the immigration of skilled workers is crucial in the AI race against China, threatened by Trump’s immigration policies.
“The impact on business is nuanced, but I think it’s overshadowed by the impact on the country,” Etzioni said. “If Trump ends up becoming the agent of chaos that many of us anticipate, that will have the biggest impact on AI, even more so than specific policies.”
Harris would build on Biden’s executive order and likely maintain her overall approach to the AI industry.
With his California roots and deep ties to the tech industry – his brother-in-law Tony West is an executive at Uber — Harris played an important role in the Biden administration’s AI efforts. She met with tech company executives, helped introduce memos on the use of AI in the federal government, and represented the administration at a global AI security summit, which she reports on her campaign website.
After Biden took office, Reese said work on AI policy finally became more ambitious than it had been under Trump.
“It seems like the major difference is that the Biden administration has tried to implement bigger policies,” he told BI.
When asked for comment, the Harris campaign directed Business Insider to the vice president’s policy playbook, which spells out Harris’ intention to honor Biden’s executive order and includes plans for an “America Forward” strategy. which focuses in part on strengthening AI technology. THE politics book also outlines a plan to grow the National AI Research Resource, which supports startups and researchers.
Experts Business Insider spoke with aren’t sure what Harris would do as president. They all expect her to take an approach broadly consistent with Biden’s. Shahi said Biden provides “a simple foundation to build on” but doesn’t think AI is necessarily a priority from day one.
“I think a Harris administration is probably going to take this kind of much more linear and much more predictable path, based on a lot of the existing body of AI policy, like the National AI Research Resource.” , Reese said, describing such continuity as the healthiest approach.
Whether Trump or Harris wins the White House, Etzioni and Bailey said having AI experts in administration is crucial. Among the few benefits Bailey sees in Biden’s executive order is the call for agencies to appoint AI directors.
“At the end of the day, none of them are AI experts, so the question is who they would hire,” Etzioni said of the candidates.