A public engagement process on AI regulation, launched last week by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, creates an opening for the tech sector to scour existing federal rules for barriers to artificial intelligence development and uses, with industry sources already citing potential payoffs in areas including health care, manufacturing and transportation.
“This inquiry provides a good opportunity to do a little regulatory house cleaning by revaluating analog era rules that might be holding back important AI era innovations today,” said Adam Thierer, senior technology & innovation fellow at the R Street Institute.
OSTP on Sept. 26 published a request for public feedback on regulations that could be hindering the development and deployment of AI products and services, with an Oct. 27 comment deadline. The initiative was mandated by President Trump’s July 23 AI action plan and tracks with deregulation processes kicked off across the federal government.
OSTP Director Michael Kratsios flagged the inquiry in a series of Sept. 26 X postings.
“Per @POTUS’ AI Action Plan, we have issued a call to industry, researchers, & the public for regulatory reforms to promote AI innovation. US AI leadership depends on trust in AI tech & confident adoption in daily life. Getting the regs right is essential,” Kratsios posted.
“The U.S. believes in a sector-specific, risk-based approach to AI policy, in contrast to a centralized regulatory regime. AI-powered medical devices raise vastly different policy questions than do AI commercial drone delivery or AI financial tools.”
For example, he said, the Food and Drug Administration should lead on AI and medical devices, the Federal Aviation Administration on drones, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on autonomous vehicles, and the Securities and Exchange Commission on “certain financial tools.”
“However,” Kratsios said in the post, “many sector-specific regulations were developed prior to present-day AI capabilities, causing them to block AI innovation rather than guide it. The RFI invites America’s innovators to identify where legal or operational requirements have fallen behind advances in the industry, what regulatory clarity would help them do their incredible work, and how outdated regulations stifle AI development, deployment, and adoption.”
He said, “We’re looking for specific responses to inform areas for policy updates or clarifications by October 27.”
The RFI posed questions in six areas, asking stakeholders to help identify AI activities that are “currently being inhibited” by regulation and the specific laws and rules that “present barriers to AI development, deployment, or adoption in your sector.”
It is likely to get a hefty reaction from industry groups and other stakeholders.
Information Technology Industry Council vice president of policy Courtney Lang said, “Ensuring U.S. AI policy is efficient, tailored, and keeps pace with technological change is a top priority for the tech industry. We appreciate that OSTP is requesting stakeholder feedback and bringing industry to the table to better understand where regulations might need to evolve, change, or otherwise be streamlined.”
Lang said, “We look forward to partnering with the Trump Administration to ensure U.S. AI innovation continues to thrive.”
Joshua Landau, senior counsel for innovation policy at the Computer & Communications Industry Association, said, “The U.S. is well positioned to globally lead on artificial intelligence innovation based on existing talent, company investment in R&D, and balanced copyright laws.”
“At the same time,” Landau sad, “existing regulations may present unintended obstacles to AI development. We appreciate that OSTP is prioritizing innovation through stakeholder outreach to ensure any federal regulatory approach is thoughtful and risk-based.”
Michael O’Brien, spokesperson for the Business Software Alliance, said, “We look forward to gathering feedback from our members and providing responses to the RFI that ultimately promote AI adoption.”
Promoting uses
Hodan Omaar, senior policy manager for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said, “AI policy has poured attention into whether today’s rules go far enough to rein in risks. What has had far less focus is the flip side -- whether the regulatory frameworks and guidelines in place actually allow the benefits of AI to reach the people. Many were written long before modern AI and don’t line up with how the technology works in sectors like health care, finance, transportation, manufacturing, education, and agriculture.”
Omaar said, “Alzheimer’s care is a clear example. AI tools already exist to help identify patients at risk, detect the disease earlier through blood-based diagnostics, tailor interventions, and even accelerate drug development. But adoption lags because reimbursement policies sit in a gray area when it comes to covering AI-enabled tests, data-sharing rules make it hard to pool the multimodal information these tools need, and consent rules around patient data are especially hard to navigate in diseases where patients may gradually lose the ability to make informed decisions.”
Omaar said, “These outdated frameworks end up discouraging hospitals and clinics from using AI tools that could catch the disease earlier and give patients and families more years of quality life. This is exactly the kind of barrier the OSTP effort can surface and clear away, so innovation isn’t stranded by rules written for another era.”
R Street’s Thierer also weighed in on beneficial uses -- including in health care -- that could be lost amid current regulations. “Prime targets for consideration might be FAA and NHTSA rules that constrain autonomous drone and automotive innovations. Older FDA policies for medical device approval could also be evaluated to ensure they're not blocking AI-enabled medical advances,” Thierer said.
“The bottom line,” Thierer argued, “is that it's time for government to come to grips with the costs of 'set-it-and-forget-it' regulations that outlive their usefulness or constrain important new innovations. This proceeding can get that important process started.”