Inside America’s AI Action Plan

Dan and Chris break down Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americas-AI-Action-Plan.pdf, issued by the White House in July 2025. Structured as three "pillars" — Accelerate AI Innovation, Build American AI Infrastructure, and Lead in International AI Diplomacy and Security — our dynamic duo unpack the plan's policy goals and its associated suggestions — while also exploring the mixed reactions it’s sparked across political lines. They connect the plan to international AI diplomacy and national security interests, discuss its implications for practitioners, and consider how political realities could shape its success in the years ahead. Featuring: Chris Benson – Website https://chrisbenson.com/, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisbenson, Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/chrisbenson.bsky.social, GitHub https://github.com/chrisbenson, X https://x.com/chrisbensonDaniel Whitenack – Website https://www.datadan.io/, GitHub https://github.com/dwhitena, X https://x.com/dwhitenaLinks: Press Release: White House Unveils America's AI Action Plan https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/07/white-house-unveils-americas-ai-action-plan/Paper: America's AI Action Plan https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americas-AI-Action-Plan.pdfSponsors: Shopify https://www.shopify.com/in?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=us-all-na-awareness-1q24-en&utm_term=practicalai&utm_content=practicalai – The commerce platform trusted by millions. From idea to checkout, Shopify gives you everything you need to launch and scale your business—no matter your level of experience. Build beautiful storefronts, market with built-in AI tools, and tap into the platform powering 10% of all U. S. eCommerce. Start your one-dollar trial at shopify.com/practicalai http://shopify.com/practicalaiRegister for upcoming webinars here https://practicalai.fm/webinars!

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Welcome to the Practical AI Podcast, where we break down the real-world applications of artificial intelligence and how it's shaping the way we live, work, and create. Our goal is to help make AI technology practical, productive, and accessible to everyone. Whether you're a developer, business leader, or just curious about the tech behind the buzz, you're in the right place. Be sure to connect with us on LinkedIn, X, or Blue Sky to stay up to date with episode drops, behind-the-scenes content, and AI insights. You can learn more at practicalai.fm. Now, onto the show.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Welcome to another fully-connected episode of the Practical AI Podcast. I'm Daniel Lightnak. I'm CEO at Prediction Guard and joined, as always, by my co-host, Chris Benson, who is a Principal AI Research Engineer at Lockheed Martin. And in these episodes, where it's just the two of us, we try to analyze some of the things that have come out in recent AI news and maybe touch on a few practical elements that will help you level up your machine learning and AI game. And really excited today, Chris, to talk about something that is very intriguing, somewhat maybe confusing for some people,

• 1:32Speaker 01

  exciting for some people, maybe producing a little bit of uncertainty, some... Yeah, just a lot of mixed feelings, maybe, around this. We're talking about America's AI Action Plan, which was just released by the White House here in the US. So, yeah, this just came out not too long ago. Obviously, we're just kind of reading through the initial release and some reactions. But I say there's been some mixed feelings. It's kind of generally rolled back some things that have made... Been happening in the US around AI and regulation.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Maybe introduce some other things that like there are elements of the action plan that I find really inspiring and encouraging. And so, yeah, it's maybe an interesting mixed bag for for many folks. But yeah, what I'm sure it's come up in your circles and in in discussions. Maybe even, you know, with with family or around town that AI has an or America has an AI action plan. What are your initial thoughts?

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, since the White House released it, I've definitely had people asking what what I thought of it and stuff. And I know both you and I had read it a while back as it was released. And we're just getting to a point where we had a chance to to talk about on the show. And leading into it, I'm of course going to do my usual disclaimer.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  That because we're talking about stuff that can tangentially touch government affairs and military. I am only speaking for myself as always, and never ever speaking for any other organization. And most especially not my employer Lockheed Martin. So I wanted to be very clear about that. Because I I do want to keep my job. So this is this is just Chris Benson on the podcast. So like

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Good to know.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. So this is it's an interesting mixture of a lot of things as you were alluding to. And like you, there were some things I was inspired about. There's a fair number of things in there that are inspiring. But there's also a lot of stuff that either rolls back other aspects that we probably that I think a lot of people would agree in a nonpartisan context would be advisable. Some of the protections in certain areas and it is, I think, you know, my my single biggest gripe. It is. It is a starkly partisan document in many respects.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  It feels like it was written by some folks that were that had some good ideas in there, but were being very careful to make sure it would fit in with the current political climate. And that as I read it, that was I felt like I kept bumping into that filter that the authors would have had on it. So that that's my first impression, a highly filtered document with good and bad in it.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm, I'm interested, I mean, kind of to set the stage a little bit. Now, we've talked about other things that have rolled out from the government directly from the White House on the show. I'm just looking back at 2019, if you remember those days, 2019, there was a White House executive order on AI. This was during the Biden administration. And we talked about that on the show. It's interesting in that case. So if we kind of roll back the clock a little bit, for quite a while, there has been this effort

• 5:13Speaker 01

  at NIST, the National Institutes for Standard and Technology, around kind of AI and AI risk management framework. So that kind of has some hints of regulation. It's a government thing, but it's not, you know, official on, you know, any kind of regulatory front. And then there was this White House executive order, which I think I might have said, I think I might have said Biden, but I think this, this one that I referenced from 2019 was, was a Trump executive order. Now I'm getting all the sequence confused, but that's, that's episode, what, 34? It's back a ways. Back a while. I, I think I was thinking, because I think we did talk about another executive order. We did.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Anyway, there, there's been this kind of rolling, you know, series of executive orders back and forth on both sides, like you say, of the partisan line. What, from your perspective, maybe before we dive into the details, some of the executive orders that have come into place do have some type of regulatory implication in the sense that, I remember, you know, one of them that we talked about, for example, around model builders and the requirement of certain sizes of models to, you know, be regulated in a, in a certain way. In terms of this AI action plan, what, what is your understanding?

• 6:43Speaker 01

  If you do have one or don't have one of like, what does it mean that this is an AI action plan? It's not a executive order. And partially, in my understanding, it's meant to not regulate. And so maybe it's just a document. But really, kind of what I guess, what is the implication of this more broadly? Do you think in terms of its its impact?

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it definitely reflects this current administration's approach well beyond AI to to a larger viewpoint. This one definitely is all about removing removing regulation, which I think is, I think that there are places where where regulation could be beneficial. And there are places where regulation might get in the way. And I think you have to pick carefully where you want to put that. I think, and one of the other things that I've noticed here is that, you know, there's a lot, you know, there's a lot of verbiage in it. That kind of on the surface, almost anyone would say, yeah, I'm for that.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  But we also know if you look at the politics outside of this specific document and the and specific AI field. What free speech is depends, you know, in terms of interpretation, depends on who you're talking to. If you put a Democrat and a Republican in the room and talk about what free speech is, you may get some different answers on what that is and what's implied into that. And so it's one of those situations where we are, we are left to interpret what the intent of some of these words means along the way. And it's almost impossible to do that without kind of taking in the larger political environment, which sadly, I think detracts from the document in a lot of ways. I think it could be better.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  I'll also note. That it doesn't, it, there's a whole bunch of recommendations in it and there's no funding for any of those recommendations that is noted. And so it's interesting about, in the sense of where do you go from here? Whether it's a good idea or a bad idea from my perspective, I had still left with, well, great, maybe I like that idea. How are we going to do that now?

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think as opposed to some other maybe executive orders that had some direct implications right away, this is again, an action plan. And I guess that's what I was meaning in terms of impact, like what impact is this going to have other than being a document? I think if, if people are out there and maybe one implication that could be thought of is, you know, universities applying for grants, companies applying for, you know, SBIRs or other types of government interactions. I think in the current climate of those things getting approved, if it's AI related, it probably needs to kind of tie into this

• 9:39Speaker 01

  action plan for it to have a greater chance of, of success and tying into that action plan kind of has this trickle down effect to all of these grants and innovation that happen across university and across, you know, small business and et cetera, et cetera. And, and so there is maybe this trickle down effect, but it's not, it's not a sort of direct, we're going to fund this or that. And there's this program, but maybe that is more the impact in terms of the climate of what is funded and how that affects, you know, businesses and, and universities or research institutions that get government funding.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Yep, I totally agree. It's kind of funny. We've talked about some of the ambiguity as we've gone forward into this and, you know, about, you know, and the good and the bad of removing regulation a little bit, the ambiguity of the free speech component of it. One thing that I'll say that I, I like the intent of is the promotion of open source and open weight AI, which are both explicitly, you know, pointed out in several points in the document. And I know that we have long talked about that on the show. And so I think that's one of those, those inspirational moments, though there's not a lot of how we're going to get there, I must say.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually, and just to give maybe, you know, we've talked about a little bit of the impact, we've set it some stage. I love this kind of point that you're bringing up about the open access models, which of course I'm very passionate about. But maybe it would be helpful also for our listeners, there's, there's kind of a bit of a structure to this document. If you're listening to this in your car and you don't kind of have it in front of you, of course, we'll link it in the show notes, but there's kind of these sections and they're split up into quote pillars of the AI action plan. So kind of these key pillars. The first pillar is accelerate AI innovation. The second pillar is build

• 11:41Speaker 01

  American AI infrastructure. The third pillar is lead in international AI diplomacy and security. So there's multiple things under this first pillar. So the first pillar being accelerate AI adoption. And you've highlighted a couple of those things that might be more on the kind of controversial side related to removing regulations, specifically maybe even rolling back some of those things related to the NIST AI risk management framework, protecting quote free speech in AI models. Looking at this quote, AI systems must be

• 12:21Speaker 01

  built from the ground up with freedom of speech and expression in mind and be free of top down ideological bias. So there's that discussion of kind of the free speech piece under the innovation. Then they kind of go to this discussion like you talk about about promoting open source and open weight AI, which of course I'm, is one of those elements that I'm, I'm really excited about. Some of the, the recommended policy actions they, they talk about is ensuring access to large scale computing for startups and academics, partnering with leading technology companies to increase research and fostering this sort of environment that creates a supportive environment for

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Open models because they view this as, obviously see this as kind of a part of the the future, which I would of course agree with and with OpenAI becoming open again and releasing open models for the first time a couple of weeks ago. I think that certainly is a trend that we're seeing. But yeah, I love that piece. Of course, again, it's this mixed mixed bag of things that, you know, as you go through each of these pillars, you kind of, kind of have to, kind of have to parse through. What else stands out to you, Chris, in this kind of accelerate AI innovation pillar? There's a lot of interesting things

• 13:48Speaker 01

  there about world-class data sets, the science of AI, interpretability, adoption in government, adoption within the Department of Defense, you know, lots of things in in this innovation pillar. What else stands out to you?

• 14:04Speaker 02

  I think, you know, one of the first things that I noticed, it was, you know, so like, once again, on the surface, addressing data set quality and stuff is great at that, at that outermost layer of the onion. But as soon as you dig into it in the document, and, you know, people listening to us may be on both sides of this politically, but they immediately go for a political objective directly under that, which is basically kind of removal of DEI concerns. And for those of you who may not be familiar with the DEI acronym, it's diversity, equity, and inclusion. And that that is a big focus of policy across

• 14:46Speaker 02

  all fields within the Trump administration. And so that, had we not been inserting some of the politics into it, I would have been encouraged to see that under it, you know, but that's with each of these things, you kind of have to inspect it and see how much politics is in it. And not in fairness, not every point that they're making under either this first pillar of accelerate AI innovation or the subsequent pillars that we'll talk about include explicit politics. But I know in my first pass, that was the first thing was trying to filter. Through some of that issues and actually get to the meat of it and then think about A, many of the things that are suggested are already being done. So it's not, it's not new.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  But for those things that are not being done, how do you get there? And what's the funding to make things happen that aren't already happening?

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• 17:20Speaker 01

  Well, Chris, just kind of tying up this first pillar of the AI action plan, accelerate AI innovation. I think a couple potential implications that people could have, where obviously we can't read the whole thing here on the podcast, but we've just hit a few of the highlights of this first pillar. But I think there are going to be these sorts of debates over what defines bias in an AI model? Because there's certainly, there is, and again, I'm just kind of coming at it from a, I guess, a technology standpoint, there could be bias as related to maybe DEI types of things

• 18:05Speaker 01

  in one way or another, for example, gender or whatever that might be. But there's also bias corresponding to very real world implications around technology and security, you know, for example, the bias of one model to be more susceptible to prompt injections than another model, right? So that is a bias, but it has nothing to do with kind of these other categories. And so I think there is going to be this kind of bias, in a sense, as a term of art in our world, and in another sense, it's a politicized thing in our country. So I think there's going to be a little bit of, you know, tension there.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  I think also with the kind of rollback of some of this regulation, it's going to put more pressure, I think, on businesses to strike the balance between innovation and the safeguards that they need to put in place, because without explicitly being forced to, you're going to see

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Companies, I think, at a very, you know, high-profile level make critical mistakes in their AI applications and suffer some pretty hard brand consequences because of this. And it's going to be, I mean, that in itself, just the commercial pressure is going to force companies to think about their kind of self-regulation. And so companies are going to have to figure out this balance for themselves, I think, as it's, as it's not kind of flowing down guidance-wise from standards bodies in the government.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, that kind of gets to pillar one, accelerate AI adoption. Pillar two, build American AI infrastructure. Sounds exciting. What stood out for you here?

• 19:56Speaker 02

  It does. You know, one of the things, and I almost, I forgot to mention it in pillar one, and it applies to pillar two, is one of the subtleties I'm noticing here when they're talking about building out AI infrastructure is, you know, we, there is already quite a bit of AI infrastructure in the US. We have a lot of major players with big investments in the commercial sector that all have government and military and intelligence links and things like that. And so this applies across the board. It applies to commercial, it applies to, to, to government, et cetera. One of the things that really stood out to me in some of these suggestions was that there's a subtlety of picking winners and losers here. In most of these suggestions, there is, there is

• 20:41Speaker 02

  already something in effect that does these different things. It may not be optimized, and that's, that's open for debate. It may be a different organization from how they're envisioning it in the thing. But there is a subtle picking of winners and losers through the entire document in terms of approach, and who is, and sometimes explicitly who's responsible, and in some cases, who they're likely laying it with. And so that's one of the, is, is an overview that particularly applies to the infrastructure section pillar two, would be that I can almost envision the lobbying from

• 21:19Speaker 02

  Certain large companies that contributed to the infrastructure section as I was reading through the documents. I'll leave those companies unnamed, but probably our listeners can can come to some of those conclusions themselves. So it was it definitely, I think that there's some interesting influences that are that are at play here behind the scenes in terms of the specific choices and verbiage being used.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and just to to give people an idea of some of the things that are mentioned in the Build American AI Infrastructure pillar of the of the plan, there's sort of creating streamlined permitting for data data centers, semiconductor manufacturing, etc. Development of the grid, restoring semiconductor manufacturing, kind of onshoring that. Along with a number of security related things, so you know, bolstering the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure, creating secure by design AI technologies and applications. A mature federal capacity for AI incident response. So very, very interesting. I find this

• 22:31Speaker 01

  interesting kind of at the at the same time, there's kind of a rollback of regulation in the public sector around things like maybe what would have flowed into regulation from either the NIST AI Risk Management Framework or previous executive orders or that sort of thing. There is this pressure from the government side where they're talking about, you know, making sure and trying to force somehow, I don't know exactly how, that's kind of vague in the in the document. But to ensure that AI systems that the government relies on, particularly for national security, are protected against spurious or malicious inputs.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Some of the language from the document promoting resilient and secure AI development, having the DOD lead in collaboration with NIST, this sort of refining of generative AI frameworks, roadmaps, toolkits. It sounds like a lot of kind of what has happened in the NIST AI risk management framework, but maybe led from a different direction. So there's kind of this, I'm seeing two things at once, this sort of what was kind of rolling more to the commercial side, but now is being geared more towards government implementation of AI, but also being led from a different direction, being more led from the DOD kind

• 23:59Speaker 01

  of national security perspective versus like a NIST.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, there is a, there is a lot of kind of, you know, whether kind of government-ish, you know, in all the things, military and otherwise, that are, that are prevalent through it. And, you know, once again, as we're looking through this section, the subtlety of the outcomes that are possible here are pretty big. And I'll give you one example of that. You know, they mentioned, even though the third pillar refers to AI diplomacy and security, and the second pillar, there's a couple of points where they talk about semiconductor manufacturing in terms of streamlining the permitting of that. And there's one that's called restore American semiconductor manufacturing. And, you know, that, that has profound implications

• 24:47Speaker 02

  on the commercial space and on, not only on our foreign policy, but on our national security, that listeners of this who may not be very familiar with foreign policy and military concerns, you know, a big strategic reason why the United States is kind of the, is kind of the leader in defense of Taiwan concerns. Taiwan's responsible for its own defense, but we have some obligations there that often come out in the news that people would have seen. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that the global semiconductor manufacturing industry is very well entrenched there.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  And it's very complicated to replicate that elsewhere. That that is not a trivial thing to do. And so whether or not we are successful according to this document and doing what it's advocating, it would have implications either way in terms of things outside of AI altogether. And to your point, kind of leading into that, it definitely has a very, you know, different in, you know, shifting, there's some stuff that's assigned to NIST, but there's also stuff that might have traditionally been with NIST or other similar organizations that are often more commercially focused and moving those into into more of a DOD

• 26:04Speaker 02

  sphere of influence as opposed to that. So yeah, you, there's definitely a policy, an overall policy shift to be felt with the document going forward.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm kind of fascinated a little bit in this AI infrastructure pillar. This idea that one of the last thing they mentioned is this sort of federal capacity for AI incident response. And this is, I don't know, I was just trying to parse through a little bit of this, like, what is an AI incident? And, you know, some of this terminology, I'm sure is, you know, intentionally vague and in certain places. But at least in terms of this AI incident, they say prudent planning is required to ensure that if systems fail, the impacts to critical services or infrastructure are minimized and response is imminent.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  And, you know, they want to promote this kind of incorporation of AI incident response actions into incident response doctrine and best practices. So actually, this was another kind of point, like, other than the fact that I was a little unclear what they mean by AI incident response. I did like that this was another element in this pillar that I kind of liked from a certain perspective in the sense that I really believe that there's a lot of people kind of developing, quote, AI applications and automations and that sort of thing without a lot. A lot of best practice cybersecurity knowledge. And then over here, there's the cybersecurity folks who aren't sleeping at night.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Because they know all this is going on, but it's sort of, you know, whatever it is, like the executives or the board are pushing this AI stuff forward. They don't want to bring the cybersecurity folks in because that's going to slow things down and the naysayers or whatever. But I do really think that there's a benefit to have this kind of more cross-functional collaboration between cybersecurity and AI development. And actually bake in some of the known AI threats into cybersecurity playbooks. And some of the cybersecurity best practices into AI application development. I think if you look back, you could make the parallel that, you know, when data science was big and hyped, right?

• 28:26Speaker 01

  There was sort of data scientists building things that DevOps and infrastructure people couldn't support and there wasn't a lot of cross-functional collaboration on those things and we kind of work through a lot of that. I think there's a similar thing happening right now in terms of AI development and this sort of cybersecurity industry. So I do like that that kind of crossover in a lot of ways that they talk about under this AI incident response piece.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  It is and that in while we're talking about that particular point, you know, and we, as we were discussing kind of the the power shift that that you're seeing. I note that in their third recommendation policy note, but they shift who is in charge of that. By going to, they say led by DOD, which is the Department of Defense, DHS, which is Department of Homeland Security. And the ODNI, which is the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in coordination with OSTP, which is the Office of Science and Technology Policy. NSC, which is the National Security Council. OMB, which is the Office of Management Budget and the Office of National Cyber

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Director. And so that's the, they are clearly putting Defense and Intelligence at the front end. of that and kind of and kind of backloading it with more technology orientation on that. And that's very different from how we've seen it in the past. They have essentially flip flopped how that has traditionally been addressed to your point, which which there's potentially good and bad to that approach. There it will definitely create a different set of policies when you have a different set of of lead agencies with their priorities addressing that. And so how that how that ends up rolling out in terms of the discrete,

• 30:20Speaker 02

  you know, future executive orders and policy statements that come out and how that funding is allocated will be interesting to see in the years ahead. I will also say it will be interesting to see how this rolls out into a next administration down the road, whether that administration be democratic, a Democrat or Republican administration.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  So. All right, Chris, we are on to the third pillar. The third pillar is lead in international AI diplomacy and security. That is the third pillar of the America's AI Action Plan from from the White House. So lead in international AI diplomacy and security. There are a few things under under this pillar here. There's discussion of exporting American AI to allies and partners. There is an explicit call out of, you know, countering Chinese influence and strengthening AI compute export control enforcement,

• 31:26Speaker 01

  which I think maybe is geared towards some of that. Yeah, how how does Nvidia stuff get over to China?

• 31:36Speaker 02

  Indeed, H. That's right.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually, there's two. So there's strengthen AI compute export control enforcement, which is was what I was talking about. Then there's another point which. Like it's a double click, plug loopholes in existing semiconductor manufacturing export controls and align protection measures globally, ensure that the US government is at the forefront, invest in biosecurity, which maybe we can talk about that one here in a sec, which is, you know, why, why might that be interesting? But yeah, any sort of first, first reactions to this set of things?

• 32:15Speaker 02

  Well, while we have certainly seen current domestic politics in the previous pillars, this is without a doubt the most explicitly political pillar with turning to foreign policy that we have seen in the document. And pretty much as you read through each of the various points it makes and the underlying suggested recommendations, you definitely find it reflecting policy. So, you know, once again, this, this is very much a political and very much a turning toward national security concerns in this. It really doubles down on current administration

• 33:00Speaker 02

  policies toward China. And, you know, and as, you know, in that world, China is considered to be a peer or near peer adversary and different administrations have addressed that with different sets of policies. And, and right now it's, the current administration policy is fairly aggressive in that way. And, and we're seeing that if you look at the news right now, you mentioned the Nvidia concern in terms of export control and China recently, in the last few days, has instructed its AI companies, you know, I paraphrase, "Thou shalt seek GPU technologies

• 33:42Speaker 02

  domestically rather than going to the United States." So we're seeing it turning around like that. So as they tighten controls, whether, and you can make pros and cons in terms of arguments there, we're certainly seeing China turn around with its own set of policies and approaches on that. So only history will tell us whether or not either side is making the best policy choices currently. But yeah, this document definitely doubles down on current American foreign policy approach.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  It's interesting. I don't know if when we would have started this podcast, if I would have thought that GPUs would be kind of this thing that would be used as a kind of export and support for political allies, which is definitely kind of what it even before this AI action plan, right? This is sort of, in a sense, a kind of new arms race, you know?

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Kind of have, in a sense, like this whole market, almost like an arms market, but with with semiconductors and GPU cards, which is very interesting. Again, something we probably couldn't have expected some number of some number of years ago, but is kind of a reality.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  I mean, and I've heard many people, you know, from across many companies and across many industries, talk about this as kind of a sort of like a Cold War-esque approach, you know, where in the modern age, it's all around AI and the technologies that are associated with and support that capability. Regardless of which side of the aisle someone is on, AI is a is is depending on who you're talking to, often referred to as the most important concern within the American military establishment. And that's not surprising. We're seeing that across others as well. So it really comes down to, you know, how

• 35:52Speaker 02

  you're going to affect your national intent, if you will, on on addressing that. But yes, GPUs, models, all these different concerns have become pawns, you know, kind of global economic and military pawns for national policy or international policy around the world now.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. And yeah, I know I'm in Lafayette, Indiana. We've got a big semiconductor plant, SK Hynix, I believe it is, coming in, you know, north of town. And certainly, you've seen a lot of what Intel has done over the past years with plants out in Ohio. It will be interesting to see. But that's all. Yeah, it will be interesting to see because as you mentioned, this sort of onshoring of semiconductor manufacturing is really a complicated, a complicated problem to solve. And I can't

• 36:58Speaker 01

  speak to it with all, you know, expertise, right? But any supply chain, especially at that level, is extremely complicated. And so just kind of this idea of onshoring is definitely difficult. I think that's partially also why they mention working with allies and that sort of thing. Because some, some sort of, you know, solution to onshoring and protecting the kind of supply chain of GPUs, for example, is going to necessarily involve multiple nations. And so, yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that plays

• 37:36Speaker 01

  out. I do see there's kind of certain themes as well that are kind of cross cutting across a lot of the pillars. One, one maybe to call out, which is not really, you mentioned a couple of these that are maybe more politicized. One cross cutting thing that's interesting that they talk about is AI improving the lives of Americans by complementing their work, not replacing it, which again, is vague and certainly, but is certainly a theme that we have promoted on this show, right? So that's kind of encouraging. Now, how it's interpreted might be, everyone might interpret that different. And how compliment, like,

• 38:21Speaker 01

  what does it mean to compliment? But that did seem, I was just going to call That is one kind of cross cutting thing.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  There is an irony there in that, you know, what we're actually seeing in the job market right now is it's really tough to come into the job market, especially if you are a junior worker in the space. And so because, you know, the models that are out there, both Gen AI and others are in a lot of cases, replacing junior positions altogether and not being backfilled on that. And that's made the job market really tough for junior level people in particular, but that extends across the entire space. And so if you're going to, you know, there's, you're, there's a little bit of, of which way are you going to go?

• 39:08Speaker 02

  I mean, if you're, you know, if a company out there who's just focused on the bottom line can avoid paying a bunch of compensation by putting some models in place, we are seeing that that is happening in real life. And yet, if you're going to say, we don't want AI to replace workers, we want it to supplement them, then you're going to have to provide some form of incentive to make that happen. And that incentive could take a number of different forms, but likely there would be some sort of regulation in terms of what can occur in that. And yet, this administration is very focused on rolling back regulation for AI adoption.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  So there's a place there where you have to find some sort of balance and that isn't even recognized in this document. Each of the points is standing alone. They're not recognizing that there's conflict within the document and, and definitely not addressing how they might approach that conflict to, to, to yield real life outcomes that are better across the board.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I think kind of on that note, just getting kind of to the end here and summarizing, maybe just that there's some questions that I think anyone that sees this document is left to wrestle with that aren't, you know, we're not able to completely answer here, but I think for listeners.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  You know, these are really valid questions that I think you you can be thinking about in your own context. And the first of those I would highlight is just how are you going to balance innovation with the safety element in your context and your organization? Because ultimately, that that kind of is being even right now, it's driven by your own choices to wrestle with that and the implications of that not coming down from regulation. And it seems like that won't be coming. So that is something that you're going to have to continue to balance and and think about is that kind of innovation and and safety element. I think, you know, other pieces of this are obviously related

• 41:18Speaker 01

  to kind of AI dominance and geopolitical risk and all of those things. So you might might enjoy thinking about those. But the the major thing that I'm left with here is it's on us practitioners and and leaders in companies and organizations to really think about this balance of innovation and safety. And, you know, we we can lead out with that in good ways that are consistent with this AI action plan. And we'll carry through with benefit, whether it's this administration or another administration in terms of of best practices. So yeah, that that's my main thought kind of leaving this. Any closing thoughts from you and Chris?

• 42:00Speaker 02

  I really I subscribe to what you just said. I think you I think that's very well said. That represents where I come from as well. I'm hoping that that over time, regardless of the specific policies of a given administration, that maybe we can arrive at some policies that are maybe a little bit less political and and kind of something that everybody on both sides of the aisle could feel good about. I think it may take a little time to get there, but I would be remiss if I didn't express that hope for for eventuality. So yes, we'll see what comes next, and we'll see how this all plays out in real life with

• 42:43Speaker 02

  the real budgets and real policies to come.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  Well said, Chris. And quoting from America's AI action plan to leave our listeners, simply put, we need to build, baby, build.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  So, you know, practitioners out there, we've got, we've got some work to do. Thanks for, thanks for chatting today, Chris. It's been fun. Good. Yep, absolutely. Thanks a lot, Daniel.

• 43:14Speaker 00

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