White House’s AI Action Plan Fails to Say Who Will Do the Work

Excerpt

The new White House roadmap for US leadership in artificial intelligence is ambitious and sometimes admirably thoughtful. It’s also vague, contradictory, and at odds with reality in important ways.

The Trump administration released its long-anticipated AI action plan on July 23, pointing the way forward in AI innovation, security, and tech diplomacy. This effort has the potential gravity of a modern-day Manhattan Project for accelerating AI while grappling with AI-enabled threats and the technology’s inherent risks.

The plan acknowledges difficult truths—namely, the power and opacity of cutting-edge AI models—and the technology’s seismic impact on society. However, many parts of the blueprint are incomplete or unrealistic.

Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mark Montgomery is the director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Leah Siskind is director of impact and an AI research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.