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US President Donald Trump has signed an AI Action Plan. This outlines the way in which the US leads in AI races. For businesses that are already struggling to deploy AI systems, the rules clearly show how this management will handle AI in the future, and show how providers can approach AI development.
Like the AI executive order signed by Joe Biden in 2023, Trump’s orders are primarily concerned with government agencies and not legislative law, so it directs how to contract with AI models and application providers.
AI plans may not have a direct impact on businesses any time soon, but analysts point out that ecosystems change every time government takes a stand on AI.
“This plan could shape the ecosystem we all run. It rewards those who can move fast and deliver real-world results,” PWC’s Commercial Technology and Innovation Officer Matt Wood told VentureBeat in an email. “For businesses, the signal is clear. The pace of AI adoption is accelerated and the cost of delays is increasing. Even with a focus on federal agencies, there is ripple effect in procurement, infrastructure and norms. It’s well located.”
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He added that the action plan is “not a blueprint for Enterprise AI.” Still, businesses should expect an AI development environment that prioritizes slowing speed, scale, experimentation and reliance on regulatory shelters. Companies working with the government should also be prepared for further scrutiny of the models and applications they use to ensure alignment with government values.
Action Plans outline how government agencies work with AI companies, prioritize investment in infrastructure for recommended tasks, encourage AI development, and establish guidelines for export and import of AI tools.
Charleyne Biondi, vice president and analyst at Moody’s Ratings, said the plan “emphasizes the role of AI as an increasingly strategic asset and core driver in economic transformation.” However, she said the plan didn’t address regulatory fragmentation.
“However, current regulatory fragmentation across the US state can create uncertainty for developers and businesses. A proper balance between innovation and safety and national ambition and clarity of regulations is important to ensure ongoing corporate recruitment and avoid unintended slowdowns,” she said.
What’s in the action plan
AI Action Plans are divided into three pillars:
- Accelerating AI innovation
- Building an American AI infrastructure
- Leading international AI diplomacy and security.
The key headlines of the AI Action Plan focus on “Ensuring Free Speech and American Values.” This is an important topic for this administration. Instructs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to remove misinformation and references to diversity, equity and inclusion. This prevents institutions from collaborating with foundation models with a “top-down agenda.”
It is unclear how the government is suited to existing models and datasets, or what this kind of AI will look like. Companies are particularly concerned about the potentially controversial statements that AI systems could make, as evidenced in recent Grok Kerfuffle.
It also orders NIST to investigate and publish its findings to ensure that models from China, such as Deepseek, Qwen, and Kimi, are not in line with China’s Communist Party.
However, the most important positions include supporting open source systems, creating new testing and evaluation ecosystems, and streamlining the process of building data centers.
Through the plan, the Ministry of Energy and the National Science Foundation have been instructed to develop an “AI testbed for piloting AI systems in a safe, real-world setting” that will allow researchers to prototype the system. It also removes many of the deficits associated with model safety testing assessments.
What many people in the industry are excited about is explicit support for open source AI and open weight models.
“The United States needs to ensure a major open model based on American values. Open source and open weight models can become global standards in some areas of business and academic research around the world. So there is also geo-strategic value. The decision to open or closed models is essentially up to the developer.
Naturally, open source supporters who embrace Face’s Clement Delangue praised the decision on social media, saying, “It’s time for the American AI community to wake up and drop the ‘opening is not safe’ bullshit.
Sesh Iyer, managing director at BCG, told VentureBeat that this will give companies more confidence in adopting open source LLM and encourage more closed source providers to “rethink their own strategies and release weights of the model.”
The plan mentions that cloud providers need to prioritize the Department of Defense.
Let’s make the rules a little more clear
AI Action Plans are similar to executive orders and can only be directed to government agencies within the scope of government agencies. Complete AI regulations that can withstand through multiple administrations can only be achieved through Congress.
Companies understood that changes in management might not mean much of an AI regulation emphasis, and supported themselves because of its impact. The Trump administration revoked Biden’s EO and halted many of the already ongoing projects after signing.
With the signing of the Action Plan, the Trump administration at least demonstrates its priorities and its stance on AI development, which will help boost corporate confidence in technology.
However, even without EO or Congress-led regulations, businesses were already building and expanding their AI ecosystem. There is some concern about the lack of rules and the uncertainty that comes with it, but it never stopped companies from getting excited about technology that promises to make work easier. At the very least, this plan will make it easier to grow more.
“Some external frictions will decrease, such as faster permissions, more data center capabilities, potential funding, etc. But the actual acceleration will happen within the company, including skills, governance, and the ability to deploy responsibly. Those who have already built that muscle will be best positioned to capitalize the momentum that the plan produces,” said PWC’s wood.
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