Trump likely to scale back AI policy with repeal of Biden order

Adam Thierer, a senior fellow for R Street Institute’s technology and innovation team, said it’s likely “agencies will be instructed to take a slightly more hands-off approach to AI regulation and also consider alternative approaches besides regulation,” as was the case under the first Trump administration’s own AI memorandum.

The real challenge for Trump’s team, Thierer said, is how to play a “cut-and-paste game of saying what you do and do not like as you do the repeal and replace of the executive order…”

Thierer said Trump may want to pull back some of the authority of the AI Safety Institute and return it to the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which was where AI decisions were centralized during the previous Trump administration. “We might see a return to that model of White House leadership, as opposed to delegating it to the Department of Commerce,” he said…

One space to watch in that area will be open source, according to Thierer, who noted there seems to be “countervailing forces at work in the Trump administration behind the scenes” on the topic. Vice President-elect JD Vance has been publicly supportive of open-source AI — or models with code publicly available — as a counter to big tech. But at the same time, those in the national security community and defense space see open source as a potential vulnerability.