President Donald Trump on Tuesday urged Congress to block states from creating their own rules for generative artificial intelligence and said the country needs one federal standard to guide the sector.
“Investment in AI is helping to make the U.S. economy the ‘hottest’ in the world, but overregulation by the states is threatening to undermine this major growth ‘engine,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Referring to an incident in which Google $GOOGL’s AI tool erroneously depicted one of the U.S. founding fathers as Black, he added: “Some states are even trying to embed DEI ideology into AI models, producing ‘woke AI’ (remember Black George Washington?).”
He said: “We must have one federal standard instead of a patchwork of 50 state regulatory regimes. If we don’t, then China will easily catch us in the AI race.”
Trump has placed a heavy emphasis on AI during his second term and has framed it as a strategic priority for America. Earlier this year, he instructed his administration to build an AI Action Plan aimed at positioning the country as “the world capital in artificial intelligence” and at clearing regulatory hurdles that industry supporters claim would limit growth.
The president urged lawmakers to act through the National Defense Authorization Act or through a separate bill. He wrote that policymakers should “Put it in the NDAA, or pass a separate Bill, and nobody will ever be able to compete with America.”
House Republican leaders have been reviewing the option of adding the measure to the defense bill, according to Punchbowl News. The legislation often becomes a vehicle for policy proposals unrelated to defense spending.
Jensen Huang, chief executive of the AI chip maker Nvidia $NVDA, raised similar concerns earlier in November. He told the Financial Times: “China is going to win the AI race.”
He later wrote on X $TWTR: “As I have long said, China is nanoseconds behind America in AI… It’s vital that America wins by racing ahead and winning developers worldwide.”
However, Trump also claimed during an appearance with Saudi Arabian leader Mohammed bin Salman Tuesday that the U.S. was still “leading by a lot” in the AI race.