President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday directing federal agencies to ask artificial intelligence companies for early access to their models, the culmination of several weeks of internal deliberations inside the White House.
After scuttling an earlier version of the executive order at the last minute, Trump approved an order that aims to have artificial intelligence companies voluntarily share information about “frontier models” with government agencies.
The deliberations among Trump officials centered on balancing federal agencies’ need to get ahead of the potentially disruptive impacts of AI with the administration’s desire to take a light touch in regulating tech companies. A similar version of the plan was pulled in May after David Sacks, the president’s former AI czar, raised concerns about its potential impact on the industry, but the administration appears to have overcome those concerns.