The White House released a five-page overview of AI policy recommendations, but continued gridlock in Congress and the upcoming Congressional elections make its actual implementation uncertain at best.
The legislative framework: The plan builds on President Trump’s December Executive Order which called for a federal approach to AI regulation, and is meant to provide specific policy recommendations for executing that vision. Among other focuses, the framework calls for incentivizing AI infrastructure and innovation, preventing censorship on AI and social media platforms, and developing an AI-ready workforce. Policy recommendations most relevant to CHROs include:
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Preemption of state laws: Establishing a national standard to avoid a fragmented patchwork of state AI regulations (as is already developing), as AI “is an inherently interstate phenomenon with key foreign policy and national security implications.”
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Incentivizing AI development, and no “Department of AI”: Establishing regulatory sandboxes (i.e., spaces free from liability, generally) for AI applications and prohibiting the creation of any new federal AI-specific regulatory body (instead, existing agencies would regulate AI).
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Workforce AI training: Without creating new regulations, ensuring that existing education and workforce training programs incorporate AI training. The framework also calls for studies into AI-driven workforce realignment.
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Incentivizing AI infrastructure: Streamlining federal permitting for AI infrastructure construction (such as data centers) while ensuring that individuals do not have to pay for any increased electricity costs resulting from new AI data center construction or operation.
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Protections for minors accessing AI platforms: Safety requirements for AI platforms and services likely to be accessed by minors.
What’s missing: The five pages of bullet points do not provide much in the way of specific policy solutions—like the Executive Order, they are closer to general goals than actionable legislative or regulatory proposals.
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A divergence from state trends: While states increasingly focus on guardrails on employer use of AI in employment decisions, preventing AI-related discrimination, and safety limits and disclosure requirements for frontier AI model developers, there is almost no mention of any of these areas in the White House’s framework.
The bottom line: This administration has made its preference for a hands-off approach to AI regulation abundantly clear. This new framework is a reflection of that approach, and focuses more on preventing AI regulations than creating them.
Will it go anywhere? Although this administration is not afraid to test the limits of executive branch authority, much of what it is seeking in this framework will require Congressional legislation. That makes the chances of implementation murky at best, given diverging opinions on AI regulation both between and within both sides of the aisle, continued Capitol Hill gridlock, and the looming possibility of a Democrat-led Congress after the midterm elections that would have little appetite for executing Trump’s policy plans.
