Towards Understanding Uncertainty in the Regulation of AI in the USA in 2025
With the year 2025 on the horizon, companies are already dealing with a multilayered web of regulation surrounding AI in the United States and still have doubts about the future. This is due to on-going political debates and increasing legal issues associated with use of artificial intelligence (AI) in business sectors. Nonetheless, it seems that firms are expected to go on paying attention to the governance and management of AI to minimize the risk of litigation, brand, and compliance.
The first type of uncertainty is the government’s position on U.S AI regulations to be determined by the incoming administration. President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to deregulate and repeal many of the executive orders that President Joe Biden has implemented on AI. But how Trump will tackle the US AI regulation is still ambiguous and this uncertainty is causing some concern among the business people. Even Musk’s ties to Trump only make the situation worse, as his support of state-level US AI Regulation in California indicates that even with the current president, some form of AI regulation may still be on the horizon, albeit with much less stringent rules than before.
Other than the future federal activities, there are increasing numbers of state-level AI laws that are causing compliance issues for businesses. Litan, a Gartner analyst, further notes that the increasing complexity in these state laws might force the Trump administration to think about the need for a standardized framework to address state laws. Nonetheless, because the current administration under President Trump wants to decentralize the federal government and limit its role, such an action is uncertain.
Thus, the number of legal cases related to AI keeps increasing as the regulatory environment does not stabilize yet. Legal cases related to regulation of US AI and patents specifically generative AI are on the rise due to the massive growth in the use of generative AI. Of the surveyed decision-makers of generative AI from Forrester Research, 21% revealed an increased number of legal investigations and lawsuits over the use of generative AI. Lacking specific AI guidelines in the United States, organizations can only resolve such issues through the legal system which is financially and temporally expensive.
Lack of broad US AI regulation results in enterprise AI risk management that independently addresses legal and reputational risks. Alla Valente, Forrester analyst, notes that enterprises are cataloging and screening the AI models they deploy and also increasing the attention on the third-party AI apps. These governance practices are gradually being incorporated into the overall risk management framework as corporations seek to safeguard their brands in addition to compliance with a variety of legal requirements.
But even in this case, as companies are getting ready for the changing US AI regulation under the Trump administration, they can’t lose sight of the global picture. EU’s proposed EU AI Act and other global AI rules will remain relevant to organizations’ plans particularly those with operations across borders. In many organisations, it will be important to monitor these regulations, domestic or international, as a means of addressing risk and compliance.
As a result, governance tools such as the Holistic AI Tracker 2.0 of Holistic AI are becoming increasingly important for businesses that want to remain up to date on the latest AI laws. These tools assist organizations in monitoring the current US AI regulation and state changes and the international legal environment. In particular for legal professionals it constitutes a one-stop-shop that may help them to navigate through the growing amount of regulation of AI in jurisdictions.
Overall, it can be said that the lack of definite US AI Regulation in the United States will not hinder the AI development rate. However, companies will remain rather concentrated on effective governance frameworks as they expect new legal challenges when AI solutions remain more and more entwined with business processes. While the federal AI regulation may shift in the years to come, companies cannot wait for the changes to happen and need to continue to mitigate AI risks, and meet the current and future regulation standards.
source:: techtarget.com
