The US Senate AI Gang Says ‘Spend Heavy, Regulate Light’ 

The US Senate ups spending on artificial intelligence but neglects regulation, while Europe races ahead with its binding AI Act. Transatlantic cooperation is missing.

The bipartisan Senate AI Work Group, known as the AI Gang, held months of discussion, hundreds of meetings, and nine forums. This week, it produced 19 pages of recommendations, launching a roadmap for US AI policy that called for $32 billion in public spending — but no concrete regulation. 

Unsurprisingly, large AI firms are pleased. Consumer groups and others are disappointed. Above all, the Senate action demonstrates the deep difference between the US and EU approaches to tech policy. US lawmakers believe it is premature to restrain fast-moving AI innovation. In contrast, the EU’s AI Act bans facial recognition applications and tools that exhibit racial or other discrimination. 

Both sides could learn from each other. Outside of recent legislation mandating the sale or ban of the social media app TikTok, the US has failed to pass major tech legislation in years. The EU is filling the gap, setting global regulatory standards. But the US is pouring money into research and development of new technologies, while the EU falls behind in productivity and competitiveness.

For the US Senate AI Gang, money is the priority, with specific suggestions on how and where to spend federal funds on AI development. Some Gang members wanted a figure even higher than $32 billion per year. The plan’s formal title Driving Innovation in Artificial Intelligence points to US leadership in AI both as an opportunity and as essential to maintain competitiveness. 

Across the Atlantic, the EU AI Act does not include expenditure recommendations — but maybe it should have. The EU struggles to meet its ‘Digital Decade Goals,’ which include offering all citizens gigabytes of fast broadband and three-quarters of businesses adopting cloud computing. EU productivity lags far behind the US. If the continent falls behind in AI, the gap will grow. The EU has money – its Covid Recovery Fund could be mobilized for AI investments. 

What the EU has proven adept at is writing rules for tech and those rules have spread. Its GDPR privacy law has been adopted and copied the world over — including by 15 US States. The EU’s Digital Markets Act is surfacing in other jurisdictions, just weeks after coming into effect. The EU AI Act looks set to follow the same path. For better or worse, the EU is writing the ‘rules of the road. ’ It would be foolish for the US to ignore them. 

Admittedly, the US sees similar regulatory challenges in reigning in Big Tech as the EU. The Biden Administration has launched a series of antitrust lawsuits against Google, Apple, and Amazon. Executive orders designed to ensure AI safety proliferate. The Senate AI Gang announced its support for a US GDPR-style federal privacy legislation and is planning concrete legislation to ban AI deep fakes in political campaigns. 

But antitrust and executive orders do not build a meaningful regulatory framework. They are not a set of rules for the world to follow. Thorny issues, such as open sourcing are ducked. In the Senate AI Roadmap, the words ‘consider’, ‘explore’, and ‘investigate’ are deployed. This hesitancy reflects the reality on Capitol Hill — it is hard to pass laws in Washington right now and there are elections in November. 

All the EU’s regulatory success has not helped to create new European tech giants and the EU AI Act will not break the pattern. Europe has some AI highflyers such as France’s Mistral. To become competitive, the EU will have to invest at levels similar to the US. Even if that happens, the combined transatlantic investment in AI will likely be eclipsed by China’s expenditure.

The US Senate roadmap represents an American plan for an American audience. It fails to meet the challenge of regulating globally, even though it closes with an exhortation to the US President to “avoid creating a policy vacuum that China and Russia will fill.” 

Transatlantic efforts to forge an EU-US AI agreement have floundered. The US has missed the opportunity to offer an alternative to the EU’s AI Act. Europe has missed the opportunity to boost AI spending and research. Both should learn from the other to fill the AI leadership vacuum before someone else does. 

Ronan Murphy is the Director of CEPA’s Digital Innovation Initiative. 

Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.