White House fields AI Action Plan proposal from OpenAI to outcompete China

OpenAI has responded to the Trump White House’s request for information on developing an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Plan to ensure the United States’ continued technological lead over China.

The deadline for a Request for Information (RFI) regarding AI will close on March 15. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is asking for input from a broad swathe of stakeholders, including the tech industry, academia, and various levels of government, to be submitted through the Federal Register.

The goals of the Action Plan echo recent statements from Vice President JD Vance, who has called for policies that strengthen America’s AI advantages while avoiding regulation that could prove detrimental to private sector creation.

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During February’s AI Action Summit in Paris, Vance said world leaders and policymakers should prevent AI from being “co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship.” He also cautioned against “excessive regulation” that could hamper pro-growth AI policies.

OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane told Fox Business on Tuesday that the Trump administration has been “incredibly accessible” in terms of wanting to engage in detailed conversations surrounding AI strategy.

The submission of these AI Action Plan proposals, Lehane said, lays out OpenAI’s goal of making sure that the U.S. prevails in building democratic AI to “create freedoms for individuals” and benefit all people.

While Lehane believes the U.S. is winning on talent as well as chips that handle complex computations, he noted that the authoritarian structure of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has enabled them to quickly make massive progress on energy (such as new nuclear facilities) and garner a tremendous amount of data from citizens.

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Still, he suggested that America’s “arsenal” of democracy and economic system uniquely positions the country to scale ingenuity.

“At the end of the day, the reason this country is a superpower, the reason that we believe in America is because America believes in innovation. You know, our capitalist free market system has consistently been how we have won as a country,” Lehane added.

The proposals from OpenAI to the White House highlight recent announcements, including the company’s AI economic and infrastructure blueprint and collaborations with government agencies and laboratories.

However, the letter to the White House also includes fresh proposals.

One of these proposals is a call to expand the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute (US AISI) into something potentially focusing more on national security and competitiveness issues.

Within this framework, big and small tech could voluntarily work with US AISI to make its capabilities available to the government, allowing the U.S. to compare where it stands versus other countries.

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This relationship would also enable companies to test their model capabilities and avoid being caught up in “EU (European Union) style laws” making their way through state governments. According to Lehane, OpenAI believes these proposed laws would put America at a competitive disadvantage and undermine the Trump administration’s goals.

While the Trump administration has signaled it plans to take an approach that favors deregulation of AI, Vance’s appearance at the summit coincides with recent attempts by the EU to enforce harsher regulations aimed at promoting safety.

OpenAI also believes that the U.S. can utilize its lead and existing export structure for commercial diplomacy, thereby locking in U.S. “democratic rails” around the globe.

“How do we use our export and our lead as an incentive and leverage, you know, to win the world? 1944, the U.S. had a vision to create the global financial rails on the U.S. dollar. We’re at a similar moment here,” Lehane told Fox Business.

OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer also highlighted a proposal that would apply the U.S. fair use approach to data and copyright in the context of AI.

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In the letter to the White House, OpenAI claimed that the federal government can secure Americans’ freedom to learn from AI and avoid forfeiting the U.S. AI lead by preserving American AI models’ ability to learn from copyrighted material.

“That includes both making sure that people have access to this, like the kid in rural Kansas, the kid in Compton, should really get the same access to information, knowledge and intelligence as the kid going to Harvard or Oxford. And just understanding, like data is a national security resource – we have to think about it that way,” Lehane told Fox News Digital.

In January, Trump unveiled a new $500 billion AI infrastructure project called Stargate, a datacenter joint venture between investment holding company Softbank, and tech companies OpenAI and Oracle that Trump labeled the “largest AI infrastructure project in history.”

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Trump also signed an executive order that directs federal agencies to make data and computers more available to AI experts while maintaining government security and confidentiality.

The executive order calls on federal agencies to establish guidance to ensure that AI is developed in a safe way and asks that these agencies help workers gain relevant skills through fellowships, training programs, computer science education, and more.