Individuals, industry groups, and local governments have submitted more than 10,000 comments to the White House about their ongoing national AI policy, also known as the AI Action Plan. On Thursday, the White House Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) published the submitted text in a PDF spanning 18,480 pages.
Comments that touch on topics ranging from copyright to environmental damage to AI data centers have led President Donald Trump and his allies to reposition the US government’s AI priorities.
In January, President Trump abolished former President Joe Biden’s AI executive order. This directed the author’s guidance to assist in identifying and correcting defects in the model that contained bias. Critics who allied with Trump argued that reporting requirements for the order were tedious and that businesses were forced to disclose their trade secrets.
Shortly after rescinding the AI executive order, Trump signed an order directing federal agencies to promote the “ideologically unbiased” development of AI that promotes “human prosperity, economic competition and national security.” Importantly, Trump’s order did not mention the key tenet of Biden’s initiative, the fight against AI discrimination.
Comments submitted to the White House reveal what is at stake in the AI race.
Many commenters petitioned the Trump administration to tighten copyright restrictions, claiming that AI is, in a nutshell, trained on creative works that are not compensated for unwilling contributions. On the other side, commenters such as VC company Andreessen Horowitz accused the right-handed sholders of raising obstacles to AI development.
Several AI companies, including Google and Openai, have also pushed for more friendly rules on AI training in their previous comments on AI action plans.
Petitions from organizations including Americans for Prosperity, the Institute for Future Life and the American Academy of Nursing underscored the importance of investing in research at a time when the federal government is cutting scientific grants. AI experts have criticized the Trump administration’s recent cuts in scientific grants, particularly the cuts defended by billionaire Elon Musk’s Office of Government Efficiency.
Some commenters on the AI Action Plan have suggested that it could harm domestic AI efforts, targeting widespread tariffs on the Trump administration’s foreign goods. The Data Centers Union, the industry association representing the data center sector, says tariffs on infrastructure components “limit and slow down” US AI investments. Elsewhere, the Information Technology Industry Council, an advocacy group that includes members including Amazon, Intel and Microsoft, has urged “smart” tariffs to “protect domestic industries without escalating trade wars that harm consumers.”
Comments that only a handful of comments mentioned as “AI censorship” are top of many topics for many of Trump’s best friends. Elon Musk, Crypto and Ai “Czar” David Sacks claim that it is a censorship conservative perspective on popular chatbots, and has singled ChatGpt in particular as Sacks being dishonest about politically sensitive subjects.
In fact, AI bias is an cumbersome technical issue. Xai, Musk’s AI company, has struggled to create chatbots that don’t support political views about others.
President Trump has stepped up his efforts to bring together AI policy teams in recent months.
In March, the Senate confirmed Trump’s choice of Michael Kratsios, director of OSTP, focusing on OSTP’s AI policy during Trump’s first term. Heading towards the end of last year, Trump has appointed former VC Sriram Krishnan as senior policy advisor to AI at the White House.