On Wednesday, the White House unveiled its long-awaited Artificial Intelligence Action Plan, and a zombie appeared in it: A resurrected form of the controversial AI moratorium that died a very public death.
The failed congressional moratorium stipulated that no state could regulate artificial intelligence systems for 10 years on pain of losing access to a $500 million artificial intelligence development fund and potentially losing funding for rural broadband. And Trump’s new plan contains a similar, albeit vague, provision. It states that “artificial intelligence is too important to be stifled by bureaucracy at this early stage,” and the government “should not allow federal funding related to artificial intelligence to go to states with burdensome artificial intelligence regulations that waste these funds,” although it should also “not interfere with the rights of states to enact sound laws that are not unduly restrictive of innovation.”
The White House Office of Management and Budget will work with federal agencies that have “discretionary funding programs related to artificial intelligence to ensure, consistent with applicable law, that they consider the regulatory climate for artificial intelligence in making funding decisions and limit funding if regulatory regimes for artificial intelligence may impede the effectiveness of that funding or award.”
Essentially, states that choose to enact their own AI legislation could be penalized for doing so at the federal level, under a different kind of moratorium on AI legislation – one that, as described in this plan, has no expiration date.
The AI Action Plan also states that the Federal Communications Commission will lead an effort to “assess whether state AI regulations interfere with the performance of its duties and authorities under the Communications Act of 1934.” It is not yet known what the penalties for this will be.
The official White House press release made no mention of the state directives. More details about Trump’s plan, which encourages the rapid adoption of AI technologies and the expansion of AI infrastructure, as well as attempts to eradicate diversity and climate science in AI systems used by the government, will appear in a series of executive orders to be released this week.
The congressional moratorium initially passed the House of Representatives, but it was condemned by Democrats and caused divisions among some Republicans. Some industry activists believed that it would prohibit not only new AI regulation, but also data privacy, facial recognition, and other technology-related regulations in states such as Washington and Colorado.
After an intense 24-hour period of lobbying and backroom deals, including 45 rounds of voting, 99 out of 100 senators voted to remove the moratorium from Trump’s funding bill.
Now, against all odds, this provision may come back from the dead.
