On AI Policy, Trump II should study the Clinton Administration

By Var Shankar and Max Cluer

The second Trump administration, set to take office in January 2025, has yet to clarify its AI policy priorities. In this article, we suggest that the incoming administration learn from the Clinton administration’s efforts to govern emerging technologies in the 1990s. In particular, it should articulate a positive vision for AI, incorporate industry and nonprofit AI governance efforts into government policy, and anchor global efforts to steer AI in a positive direction.

A positive vision for AI

In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton’s administration was faced with rapidly accelerating technological progress, with significant economic and social repercussions. The administration’s decisions helped shape the development of biomedical research, the internet, and wireless communications. In each of these cases, the administration organized its efforts around a positive vision.

President Clinton asked people to imagine a future with better and more equitable health care outcomes, schools and libraries that brought the internet to everyone, and affordable wireless communications connecting people with friends, family, and services. 

The incoming Trump administration should similarly organize national AI efforts around a positive vision. It should ask: how can we harness AI to create new industries and jobs, to personalize health care and reduce its costs, and to promote healthy interactions between people and AI? These efforts should guide the administration’s AI policy.

Openness to industry and nonprofit AI governance efforts

The incoming Trump administration has promised to unleash the dynamism of the private sector, to grow the economy and create jobs. As it develops its approach, it should study how President Clinton elevated private sector and nonprofit approaches to governing emerging technologies in the 1990s.

President Clinton recognized that many significant advances in the development of the internet were due to small networks of academics and hobbyists. His administration’s 1992 Framework for Global Electronic Commerce recognizes that the “genius and explosive success of the Internet can be attributed in part to its decentralized nature.” It also suggests that the government should “encourage industry self-regulation wherever appropriate” and “refrain from imposing new and unnecessary regulations.”

When faced with the task of formalizing the Domain Name System (DNS), a key technical component of the internet, the Clinton administration transferred management of the domain name system to a newly-created nonprofit organization.

The Clinton administration’s approach had benefits and pitfalls. It recognized technical and industry expertise, promoted economic growth, and allowed the US to lead the internet revolution globally. At the same time, it led to an internet that is dominated by large companies in the US and fragmented globally.

The Trump administration should carefully weigh policy trade-offs, incorporate promising AI governance efforts into government policies, and actively promote the development of an AI assurance ecosystem with participation from government, industry, and non-profits.

American Leadership on the Global Stage

The incoming Trump administration has pledged to reverse the Biden administration’s 2023 Trustworthy AI Executive Order, which created the foundation for efforts such as the International Network of AI Safety Institutes. This would be short-sighted.

Instead, the incoming administration should demonstrate American leadership by anchoring and funding international coalitions tasked with achieving positive AI policy objectives, like personalizing health care and reducing its costs.

Here, the incoming administration can learn from the Clinton administration’s stewardship of the Human Genome Project (HGP), a 13-year effort to identify all of the base pairs of the human genome. Though the US funded most of the HGP, governments and labs in the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, and China also made significant contributions. Thanks to the HGP, researchers were able to rapidly sequence the Covid-19 virus and develop vaccines in 2020.

Anchoring international efforts on AI collaboration can help demonstrate American leadership in a multipolar world, pool global resources and talent around a positive vision, and develop common approaches to AI safety issues that affect everyone.