OpenAI has asked the Trump administration to help shield artificial intelligence companies from a growing number of proposed state regulations if they voluntarily share their models with the federal government.
In a 15-page set of policy suggestions released on Thursday, the ChatGPT maker argued that the hundreds of AI-related bills currently pending across the US risk undercutting America’s technological progress at a time when it faces renewed competition from China. OpenAI said the administration should consider providing some relief for AI companies big and small from state rules – if and when enacted – in exchange for voluntary access to models.
The recommendation was one of several included in OpenAI’s response to a for public input issued by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in February as the administration drafts a new policy to ensure US dominance in AI. President Donald Trump previously rescinded the Biden administration’s sprawling executive order on AI and tasked the science office with developing an AI Action Plan by July.
To date, there has been a notable absence of federal legislation governing the AI sector. The Trump administration has generally signaled its intention to take a hands-off approach to regulating the technology. But many states are actively weighing new measures on everything from deepfakes to bias in AI systems.
Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s vice president of global affairs, said in an interview that the US AI Safety Institute – a key government group focused on AI – could act as the main point of contact between the federal government and the private sector. If companies work with the group voluntarily to review models, the government could provide them “with liability protections including preemption from state based regulations that focus on frontier model security,” according to the proposal.
“Part of the incentive for doing that ought to be that you don’t have to go through the state stuff, which is not going to be anywhere near as good as what the federal level would be,” Lehane said.
In its policy recommendations, OpenAI also reiterated its call for the government to take steps to support AI infrastructure investments and called for copyright reform, arguing that America’s fair use doctrine is critical to maintaining AI leadership. OpenAI and other AI developers have faced numerous copyright lawsuits over the data used to build their models.
If China’s “developers have unfettered access to data and American companies are left without fair use access,” the company said, “the race for AI is effectively over.”
OpenAI also proposed that AI companies get access to government-held data, which could include health-care information, Lehane said. Such information would help “boost AI development,” the company said, and could “be particularly important if shifting copyright rules restrict American companies’ access to training data.”
Top Photo: A symbol for the OpenAI virtual assistant on a smartphone. Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
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