White House unveils AI action plan prioritizing innovation over regulation

The White House has released an artificial intelligence “action plan” that consolidates pro-innovation executive orders issued since January 2025, explicitly prioritizing American AI superiority through deregulation and reduced oversight. The plan represents a significant departure from the Biden administration’s approach, which emphasized bias reduction and regulatory safeguards, instead favoring rapid private-sector development and market-driven innovation.

The big picture: The action plan is built around three strategic pillars designed to maintain America’s competitive edge in AI development.

• Accelerating AI innovation focuses on removing regulatory barriers, promoting open-source AI development, and expanding workforce training programs.
• Building American AI infrastructure targets energy systems, permitting processes, and semiconductor supply chains to support large-scale AI deployment.
• Leading in international AI diplomacy advances an assertive strategy to promote U.S. AI standards globally while tightening export controls and countering Chinese influence.

Key policy shifts: The plan empowers federal agencies with broad discretion to reward or penalize states based on their AI regulatory climate.

• The Office of Management and Budget could direct agencies to “consider a state’s AI regulatory climate when making funding decisions and limit funding if the state’s AI regulatory regimes may hinder the effectiveness of that funding.”
• This approach sidesteps congressional efforts for a federal moratorium on state AI regulations, instead using agency leadership tied to the Trump administration to evaluate state policies.
• The strategy offers a more politically directed tool than previous congressional proposals, which would have undercut both Republican and Democratic authority over AI policy.

Government efficiency focus: All federal agencies are directed to ensure employees have access to frontier language models and appropriate training for AI tools.

• Pennsylvania’s early generative AI pilot with 175 state employees across 14 agencies reported an average of 95 minutes saved per day on tasks like drafting, summarization, and research.
• The directive could lead to significant productivity improvements and potential labor cost reductions through automation replacing government overhead.

Infrastructure acceleration: A companion executive order aims to streamline federal permits for AI data centers, which are essential for both training AI models and enabling user interactions.

• Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin noted the EPA wants to “increase certainty for owner-operators in the permitting process, making it clear what kind of permits are needed for new and modified projects.”
• The administration recognizes that current regulations hamper new data center construction, despite growing demand for AI infrastructure that outpaces electricity grid expansion.

Data accessibility push: The plan recommends that federal agencies promote publicly available datasets, including creating a new National Science Foundation data portal.

• This initiative aims to accelerate AI research by making government-collected data more accessible to researchers and developers.

Why this matters: The plan marks a strategic shift toward executive-branch control over AI policy, giving federal agencies explicit authority to align AI development with administration priorities while potentially bypassing traditional legislative processes for technology governance.