While attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the White House’s top science and technology adviser, Michael Kratsios, signaled that cold talks with European leaders could take place on the subject of artificial intelligence and how it is regulated.
“I will continue to show my fellow technology ministers how they can create a regulatory environment for AI to thrive,” Kratsios told NBC News, “to make sure they don’t get ahead of themselves with overly burdensome regulations, like the EU AI law, which are an absolute disaster.” For Kratsios, the Trump administration’s light-touch approach to AI regulation is the winning formula.
“There’s been an AB test for decades of how you lead in technology, and the recipe is very obvious,” said Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and one of the nation’s top advisers on artificial intelligence.
“We have presented probably the strongest, most substantive vision of a pro-innovation AI strategy in the world,” Kratsios said, referring to the White House bill. AI Action Plan released in July. “Everywhere we travel, when I meet my fellow technology ministers, they all use our language and they all talk about their own AI action plan.”
The administration’s roadmap to American AI dominance, the AI Action Plan is divided into three main sections: Innovation, Infrastructure, and International Diplomacy and Security. The plan focuses on reducing “burdensome red tape and regulations” that “unnecessarily hinder the development or deployment of AI” by repealing rules and guidance from various federal agencies, many of which were initiated by President Joe Biden’s 2023 Executive Order on AI.
Although Kratsios may not be a household name, he has a significant influence on the technological and economic future of the country. Kratsios is a veteran of Washington DC politics, having overseen all research and development efforts at the Pentagon as deputy secretary of Defense before joining the White House to serve as the nation’s chief technology officer during the first Trump administration. A key figure in America continued development of AI infrastructure and efforts to the intersection of AI and educationKratsios sat down with NBC News to reflect on the country’s progress in AI a year into his administration and outline his plans for the months to come.
Kratsios, 39, cut his teeth in the world of private industry, spending much of his early career at Thiel Capital, a venture capital firm founded by Silicon Valley kingpin Peter Thiel. White House AI czar David Sacks and senior AI policy advisor Sriram Krishnan, also longtime Silicon Valley venture capitalist moguls, are working closely with Kratsios to shape the U.S. AI agenda.
Eager to encourage the adoption of American AI technology at home and abroad, Kratsios minces no words on what he sees as failed approaches to AI policy and the stifling excesses of international organizations.
“The action plan definitively turned the page on the AI cataclysm and hostility toward AI innovation that had been the hallmark of the Biden administration,” Kratsios said. “The president was very clear in the first two days of his administration: we needed to turn this page and create a plan that would ensure the United States leads the world in AI. »
Kratsios is clear that The Trump administration’s vision is opposed with regulatory structures that have become increasingly visible in the European Union.
THE European Union AI Lawcriticized by Kratsios, imposes various requirements on AI companies depending on the risk posed by their products. THE broadest requirements for risk assessment and reporting This will affect companies like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, whose powerful founding models are most likely to pose serious or “systemic” risks to society.
“There are so many countries that are constantly talking about the importance of having an AI economy and an AI ecosystem and making sure that their citizens can actually enjoy the benefits of AI,” Kratsios told NBC News. “We want to be the catalyst for that.” »
Following a decree at the end of JulyTHE The Ministry of Commerce revealed in October a central element of this agenda with a new program to boost US AI exports. Kratsios sees this US AI export program as one of his goals for the coming months and outlined the key elements of this new initiative.
Kratsios said the program will seek to offer a tailored approach to exporting hardware and software based on a country’s specific AI needs. “We want to make it as easy as possible for countries around the world to purchase and import our stack,” Kratsios said, revealing the Development Finance Corporation And Export and Import Bank will provide financing mechanisms for countries to purchase a portion of the US AI ecosystem.
“We have the best chips, we have the best models, we have the best AI applications. And we want to provide these solutions to countries around the world so that they can actually benefit from them,” Kratsios said.
In a growing rivalry for global AI dominance, some observers view China as having an advantage in spreading its AI products to other countries. Kratsios sees the export program as a key mechanism for attracting other countries to use American technology in their own projects. pursuit of sovereign AI systems. Kratsios said more details on the program would be announced at February India AI Impact Summit.
Kratsios has a long-standing interest in AI, having led the creation of US AI Initiative during the first Trump administration. Between the two Trump administrations, Kratsios held a leadership position at Scale AI, a large data annotation company. which received an investment of 14.3 billion dollars by Meta.
Kratsios places the federal government “Genesis Mission’s effort to apply AI to critical scientific problemsannounced in November, central to the administration’s push for AI-driven innovation.
“The Genesis mission is the largest mobilization of federal science resources since the Apollo mission toward a scientific effort,” Kratsios said, emphasizing the effort’s goal of tapping the federal government’s vast resources and stores of scientific data for AI. “We have also seen an incredible amount of demand and enthusiasm from many of our partners and allies around the world. »
In the coming year, Kratsios said Americans can expect the creation of a separate “closed AI platform” for the initiative as Energy Department official Darío Gil builds the physical infrastructure for the Genesis mission.
Beyond the gem of the Genesis mission, Kratsios says he defends the federal government’s role in encouraging scientific discovery, rejecting any perceived incongruity between the administration’s approach to U.S. science funding and its embrace of AI.
“As a science enterprise, we now spend almost $1 trillion a year on research and development, and the vast majority of that, about 70 percent, is done by the private sector,” Kratsios said. “If one looks myopically at federal funds for research and development and does not believe that they are part of a larger ecosystem, then they obviously will not reap the benefits that the American people deserve.”
“’I’m very proud, and this was even in the president’s funding request to Congress, that the areas most important to the national agenda, like AI and quantum, were preserved and even increased in the budget,’ Kratsios said.
A few advocates of computer research There are concerns that cuts to the broader scientific R&D ecosystem will harm AI innovation, even if funding for AI research remains stable. Last week, a Senate committee working on upcoming federal spending bills pushed back on President Trump’s proposal to cut science funding by 22% and instead proposed a 4% reduction in science funding from 2025 spending levels.
The Senate counterproposal includes a slight increase in funding for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which houses critical federal efforts to evaluate how leading AI models work, an effort that Kratsios says “can be a tremendous lever for private sector adoption of AI.”
Trump’s budget demands a $325 million reduction from NIST’s $1.5 billion spending in 2025, citing NIST’s support for “a radical climate agenda,” although it is unclear whether these budget cuts would impact NIST’s work on AI.
Kratsios highlighted a recent initiative to create a new federal framework for AI policy as another key AI victory for the private sector and small U.S. AI companies, although many defenders AI watchdog officials remain skeptical that a federal law will sufficiently supersede existing state laws.
“Creating a patchwork of AI laws where 50 different states all have different goals will end up hurting small tech and startups more than anyone else,” Kratsios said, echoing this. a refrain of Silicon Valley venture capitalists like Marc Andreesen.
That of President Trump decree of December tasked Kratsios, alongside AI Czar David Sacks, with preparing legislative recommendations for “a uniform federal policy framework” that overrides state laws that run counter to the administration’s AI goals. “We are going to work very hard over the next year on this framework,” Kratsios said.