The White House released today Winning the Race: America’s AI Action Plan, identifying over 90 Federal policy actions to be enacted in the coming months, in accordance with President Trump’s January executive order on Removing Barriers to American Leadership in AI.
The AI Action Plan focuses on three pillars—Accelerating Innovation, Building American AI Infrastructure, and Leading in International Diplomacy and Security—with key policy recommendations including partnering with industry to develop secure, full-stack AI export packages; promoting the rapid buildout of data centers; and removing regulations that hinder AI development and deployment.
Standards Recommendations in the New AI Action Plan
Among the recommended Federal policy actions are several that underscore the critical role of standardization in AI innovation, use, and security.
Risk mitigation: The Plan notes that many sectors are slow to adopt AI technologies due to a lack of clear governance and risk mitigation standards. To address this, recommendations include: “Launch several domain-specific efforts (e.g., in healthcare, energy, and agriculture), led by NIST at DOC, to convene a broad range of public, private, and academic stakeholders to accelerate the development and adoption of national standards for AI systems and to measure how much AI increases productivity at realistic tasks in those domains.”
Data quality: The document also highlights the strategic importance of high-quality data and the role that standards can play in guiding this resource, advising that the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Machine Learning and AI Subcommittee should make recommendations on minimum data quality standards for the use of biological, materials science, chemical, physical, and other scientific data modalities in AI model training.
Data center security: Security of data centers, and standards that support this security, is another area of focus. The Plan recommends the creation of “new technical standards for high-security AI data centers, led by DOD, the IC, NSC, and NIST at DOC, including CAISI, in collaboration with industry and, as appropriate, relevant Federally Funded Research and Development Centers.”
Incident response: Standards are among other recommended resources to mitigate the impact of an AI system failure: “Led by NIST at DOC, including CAISI, partner with the AI and cybersecurity industries to ensure AI is included in the establishment of standards, response frameworks, best practices, and technical capabilities (e.g., fly-away kits) of incident response teams.”
International standardization: The Policy states an intention to “leverage the U.S. position in international diplomatic and standard-setting bodies to vigorously advocate for international AI governance approaches that promote innovation, reflect American values, and counter authoritarian influence.”
Read more in the White House press release and full AI Action plan.
