White House AI Czar Warns Against Regulation: ‘We Have To Out-Innovate The Competition’

White House Artificial Intelligence Czar David Sacks warned against sweeping AI regulations this week, as well as against a “fear-based” approach to AI.

“The directive that President Trump gave us in his first week in office was that the U.S. has to win the AI race,” Sacks said at the Amazon Web Services summit Tuesday, noting that “You can’t just regulate your way through the AI race.”

“We have to out-innovate the competition. We have to win on innovation,” Sacks said. “Our companies, our founders, they have to be more innovative than our counterparts.”

One of the first executive orders President Donald Trump signed this term was aimed at “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence.” The order instructed government agencies to “solidify our position as the global leader in AI and secure a brighter future for all Americans.”

In the same pen stroke, Trump threw out a Biden-era executive order that detailed the administration’s approach to controlling AI’s use and creation.

Speaking at the AWS summit, Sacks agreed with Trump’s position that America must devote itself to succeeding in the AI race against other countries, namely China.

“If we were to lose the AI race, the repercussions would be significant,” he said.

Sacks argued that, since America’s innovative strength resides in the private sector, regulators should allow the private sector to freely build up AI infrastructure and technologies.

Recently, Amazon announced its plan to invest $20 billion into building data centers in Pennsylvania, one of which would draw its power directly from a nuclear power plant. Many other companies are beginning to invest in the budding technology. But Sacks warns that extreme overregulation will deter them from further investment.

Sacks noted that the discrepancy between a regulator’s and businessman’s approach to technology will either make or break America’s dominance in the AI playing field.

“The mentality of Washington and regulators is to restrict and to control whereas the mentality of Silicon Valley is, again, to be a little bit more open and have people adopt your technology,” he said. “We need to, you know, have constructive regulation as opposed to regulation that hobbles our companies and creates a huge compliance load.”

“If we had taken this approach towards the internet, if we had basically had a fear based approach to regulation,” Sacks said, “I don’t think the U.S. would have become the dominant country in the internet.”

Furthermore, Sacks explained Trump’s approach to international partnership in order to secure AI supremacy.

Referring to Trump’s recent Gulf tour, in which he secured billions of dollars in investments in AI technologies and data centers, Sacks explained that, “We have to adopt a partner mentality or we’re going to push the rest of the world into the arms of our global competitor.”