The US presidential election is in its final stretch. Ahead of election day on November 5, Engadget is looking at where candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump stand on the most important tech issues of our time.
While it may not grab headlines like immigration, abortion or inflation, AI is one of the most important issues this election season. What regulations will be put in place and how strictly those regulations will be enforced will have huge implications for consumer privacy, intellectual property, the media industry and national security.
Generally, politicians lack clear or consistent policies on emerging technologies. But somewhat surprisingly, both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have at least some track record of handling artificial intelligence. In particular, Vice President Harris has been very active in shaping the current administration’s approach. And Donald Trump was the first president to sign an executive order regarding AI.
Having said that, neither of them made AI a central component of their campaign, and we’re making some educated guesses here about how either of them will approach it once they get into the White House.
Kamala Harris
With Harris’ notable involvement in the Biden administration’s AI efforts, it’s safe to assume she’ll move forward with many of those policies. While the White House began laying the groundwork for its AI initiatives in early 2021, they didn’t get moving until late 2023, and Harris has often been the public face of those efforts, including holding multiple press calls on the issue and attending the Global Summit on AI Security in London.
She’s used these venues to draw attention to AI’s potential harms, both large and small, ranging from “cyberattacks on a scale never seen before” to seniors “being kicked out of [their] healthcare plan because of a faulty AI algorithm.”
An executive order on the safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of artificial intelligence was issued in October 2023. The order noted AI’s potential to solve widespread societal problems as well as its ability to “exacerbate societal harms such as fraud, discrimination, bias, and misinformation, displace and disempower workers, suppress competition, and pose risks to national security.”
It set out eight guiding principles focused on creating standardized assessments for AI systems, protecting workers, consumer privacy, and combating implicit bias.
It also called on agencies to designate a Chief AI Officer (CAIO) and directed the federal government to develop policies and strategies that govern the use and regulation of AI. This included developing technology for identifying and labeling AI-generated content and creating safeguards to prevent the creation of images depicting sexual abuse and deepfake pornography.
Harris helped secure commitments from Apple, Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, Adobe, Cohere, IBM, NVIDIA, Palantir, Salesforce, Scale AI, Stability, and OpenAI to work toward the administration’s goals. She also worked to secure support from 31 countries for a declaration about the responsible creation and use of military AI. At this stage, the latter are simply commitments to work together to establish rules and guidelines. But there are several absent from that list, most notably Russia, China, and Israel.
Because the technology is so new, however, there are plenty of questions about how the Harris administration will handle AI. Moreover, without an act of Congress, the White House will be limited in how it can regulate the industry or punish those who violate its policies.
During the campaign, Harris hasn’t said much new about the issue, other than a brief mention at a Wall Street fundraiser, during which she said, “We will encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets while protecting our consumers and investors.” Harris has strong ties to Silicon Valley, so it remains to be seen how much she’ll try to rein in the industry. But so far, most of her statements have been focused on protecting consumers and workers.