US pushes looser approach to AI regulation, while EU pushes new law

The European Union and the United States continue to pull in opposite directions on artificial intelligence, with Washington urging other governments to loosen constraints at a recent Group of 20 ministerial meeting.

On Tuesday, the US hosted a G20 “innovation” meeting in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where it put forward arguments against AI-specific regulations.

Michael Kratsios, a tech adviser to US President Donald Trump, called for countries to instead embrace the so-called Carolina Principles, which advocate for regulations that do not single out specific technologies.

“Policymakers do not need to approach each innovation in isolation and should not treat every emerging technology as a first-of-its-kind policy problem,” Kratsios said.

Such appeals are part of Trump’s overall approach to making the US “the world leader in artificial intelligence”. He has led a campaign to slash regulations, including in AI development.

Kratsios was joined at the conference by top US tech leaders, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla’s Elon Musk.

They, too, argued for fewer constraints on AI’s expansion, while also focusing on the infrastructure needed to sustain the technology.

Zuckerberg said the build-out of data centres would demand “hundreds of thousands, and maybe millions” of skilled tradespeople, but his company was struggling to meet that demand.