U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he would sign an executive order this week that he said would create a single national rule for artificial intelligence, which the industry has said is necessary to override disparate laws passed by U.S. states.
“There must be only One Rulebook if we are going to continue to lead in AI… I will be doing a ONE RULE Executive Order this week. You can’t expect a company to get 50 Approvals every time they want to do something,” Trump said in a post on his social media site, Truth Social.
Trump did not provide details but Reuters reported last month that the U.S. president was considering an executive order that would seek to preempt state laws on AI through lawsuits and by withholding federal funding.
ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Alphabet’s GOOGL.O Google, Meta Platforms META.O, and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz have called for national AI standards instead of a 50-state patchwork of laws, saying the laws stifle innovation. The companies argue that the U.S. will fall behind China on AI development if states are allowed to regulate the technology.
And yet state leaders from both major political parties have stressed the need for AI guardrails. Last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, introduced legislation he said would create an AI bill of rights including data privacy, parental controls and consumer protections.
