Small Companies Have Most to Lose From Patchwork of State AI Laws: Kratsios
Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said Wednesday at CES that the Donald Trump administration's efforts to head off state AI laws are most important for small companies trying to gain a toehold in the AI space. Trump signed an executive order in December that directed NTIA to potentially curtail non-deployment funding from the BEAD program for states that the administration determines have AI laws that are overly burdensome (see 2512110068).
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Big tech companies “have all the resources in the world to hire all the lawyers in the world” to make sure they’re complying with the “patchwork” of regulation across the states, Kratsios said. “It’s the small companies that … will have the biggest challenge of being able to proliferate their technologies if you have this big patchwork.”
Kratsios noted that Trump tasked him and David Sacks, the White House’s top adviser on tech and crypto policy, to develop legislation on a uniform federal AI framework, which can be submitted to Congress this year.
Trump signed his first AI executive order in 2019, before ChatGPT, Kratsios said. When Trump returned, “it was very clear that the U.S. had to win this race in AI,” he said. “We have the very best” AI chips, models and applications. “How do we make, or help, the rest of the world actually use our stack?” In an earlier CES appearance this week, Kratsios discussed the administration’s “Genesis Mission,” which was released in November and is designed to speed the progress of science and AI (see 2601060052).
Kratsios also said Wednesday that the administration needs to do what it can to spur greater use of self-driving vehicles by updating federal rules. “You and I could create an amazing self-driving vehicle in our garage, but unless the government says it’s OK, we can’t actually sell it to anyone. We can’t charge you to use it. We can’t deploy it on the street.”
The digital world depends on a physical layer most people don’t think about, Caterpillar CEO Joe Creed said during a keynote address Wednesday, arguing that his construction equipment company belongs on the CES stage. “Every device in this room … depends on minerals that had to be pulled from the ground,” and every AI data center “was constructed from the ground up, and it stays online with power systems that provide reliable electricity.”
In the 1990s, Caterpillar started experimenting with autonomous mining trucks “in some of the most remote locations on Earth,” Creed said. On construction sites, Caterpillar 3D grade control systems “turn digital blueprints into GPS-guided blade instructions so that material moves to exact specifications, with a centimeter of accuracy the very first time,” he added. “Our machines keep getting smarter and faster.”
Broadband Breakfast
Every company will become “an AI company,” venture capitalist Jasmine Shih said Wednesday during a Broadband Breakfast webinar focused on CES. “Every product, service and workflow” will use AI, which “will be the infrastructure.” The “sooner we embrace it, the sooner companies will be more competitive.”
There are parts of the exhibit floor at CES that are “completely Asian. You will not see an American [product], and they’re all great products,” said consultant Joseph Longway during the webinar. “Clearly, people in Asia are far, far advanced in building electronics, in building AI.” In an Asian country, a data center can be built in six months, compared with three years in the U.S., he added.
Robots are also coming, and people in the U.S. will soon use them in their daily lives, predicted Porter Wong, founder of CleanLeap, which promotes sustainable investment. In China, “robots are everywhere … in hotels, in shopping malls,” he said. “We’re going to see more and more robots helping us do our daily chores.”