Sources: the Biden administration is split on regulating generative AI; some prefer an EU-style model while others worry over losing a competitive advantage
Biden administration officials are divided over how aggressively new artificial intelligence tools should be regulated …
Context & Ripple Effects
This May 2023 report captures the moment before Washington chose a lane: inside the Biden administration, one camp wanted an EU-style regulatory model for generative AI while another argued rules would hand away a competitive advantage. The tension resolved only partially — Biden went on to sign an executive order directing NIST, DHS and other agencies to draft safety standards while letting development continue under modest new rules, i.e., monitoring rather than hard constraints.
First-order effects
- US AI developers got de facto breathing room: the administration's competitive-advantage camp won enough ground that the resulting executive order imposed assessments and standards work, not pre-release vetting of commercial models.
Second-order effects
- With the US declining the EU-style path, regulatory requirements diverged sharply by region — exactly the patchwork the FT later warned would tie the AI industry up in red tape across jurisdictions.
Third-order effects
- Because the split was never institutionally settled, AI oversight became a per-administration fight: the Trump era reopened it from scratch, from analysts expecting the US AI Safety Institute to be dismantled or reshaped to proposals for an independent vetting regulator reporting to the SEC.
The trend: US AI governance oscillates between competitiveness-first and safety-first poles with each administration, leaving oversight structure perpetually renegotiated.