| When President Donald Trump retook office in January, one of his first acts was to repeal former president Joe Biden’s 2023 executive order on AI, which had sought to balance innovation with safeguards. Trump followed up with his own executive order promising that his administration would produce its own “Artificial Intelligence Action Plan” within 180 days. The stated goal: To “sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.” In April, the White House announced it had received more than 10,000 public comments as companies, nonprofits and advocates weighed in on what the plan should say. Among those with policy suggestions were tech giants such as Google, OpenAI, Meta and Amazon. (The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI; Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.) Now, with the 180-day deadline approaching, excitement is building — and so is the pushback. Trump is expected to unveil the action plan on Wednesday at an event hosted by the All-In Podcast and the Hill and Valley Forum. He’s also expected to sign three artificial intelligence executive orders, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private plans. - One executive order would target “woke” AI models, a reference to the administration’s allegation that some Silicon Valley companies have built tools and chatbots that show a liberal political bias.
- Another would make it easier for companies to build data centers, as tech companies say advances in artificial intelligence require gains in computing power.
- The third order would leverage the U.S. government’s development finance institution to encourage exports of American technologies.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the orders. The orders are part of a broader plan to secure American leadership in AI amid competition with China. They follow congressional hearings in which Republican lawmakers have outlined an agenda for the industry that includes ramping up energy production to power data centers and avoiding regulations that could constrain AI models’ development. Some tech industry leaders, such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, have advocated for that hands-off approach despite previously calling for regulations. Advocates of accelerating U.S. AI development sometimes point to the unveiling this year of DeepSeek, a Chinese AI model that showed cutting-edge capabilities, as a “Sputnik moment” for the industry. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has encouraged the adoption of AI throughout the federal government, building on the work of Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service. A controversial Republican proposal to stop states from regulating AI for a decade was on the verge of passing as part of the party’s sprawling tax and immigration bill before a dramatic reversal in the Senate, which ultimately voted 99-1 to remove it. The debate over that provision helped galvanize a diverse array of opponents that included consumer and labor groups and state officials from both parties. But some insiders believe the idea is likely to resurface soon in some form — perhaps even in Trump’s AI plan this week. Critics of the Trump administration’s approach are unveiling their own AI statement today. More than 80 labor, environmental, civil rights and other groups have signed a “People’s AI Action Plan,” shared exclusively with the Tech Brief ahead of its announcement Tuesday. Characterizing the Trump administration’s AI policy as “a massive handout to the tech industry,” the groups released a joint statement that calls for prioritizing the interests of ordinary Americans over those of AI firms. “We can’t let Big Tech and Big Oil lobbyists write the rules for AI and our economy at the expense of our freedom and equality, workers and families’ well-being, even the air we breathe and the water we drink — all of which are affected by the unrestrained and unaccountable roll-out of AI,” the statement says. Signatories include the Clean Air Council, Color of Change, the Consumer Federation of America, the Open Markets Institute, the National Organization for Women and Writers Guild of America East. “The rollout of the technology is acting in ways that push down wages, that devalue our work, that are harming our environment and affecting community health,” said Sarah Myers West, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, which helped organize the statement. “The idea that the public should have a voice in whether and under what conditions this technology gets used is really at the center of this effort.” A spokeswoman for Trump’s Office of Science and Technology Policy said the criticism is misguided. “This spirit of fear is exactly how China was able to make significant progress under the Biden Administration,” OSTP spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita told the Tech Brief via e-mail in response to the groups’ statement. “Artificial intelligence is at the center of our national security and economic interests. Putting America First means ensuring that emerging technologies and innovation can flourish here, at home — not with our foreign adversaries.” Trump’s plan will probably get a much friendlier audience at Wednesday’s event. The All-In Podcast, an influential show with the Silicon Valley set, is hosted by four venture capitalists — one of whom is David Sacks, Trump’s AI and crypto czar. The Hill and Valley Forum is an informal supper club whose deep-pocketed members helped propel Trump’s campaign and sketched out a road map for his AI policy long before he was elected. Our colleague Elizabeth Dwoskin wrote in May about how their influence is reverberating throughout the Trump administration. | 
