Washington Asks the G20 to Promise Not to Regulate AI

The United States spent Tuesday asking the world’s largest economies to promise not to regulate artificial intelligence.

At a G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and White House science adviser Michael Kratsios pressed ministers to sign a framework called the Carolina Principles, Reuters reported. Signatories would commit to avoid creating new AI regulatory agencies and to “reserve new regulation for novel considerations.”

Lutnick held onstage conversations with OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. Elon Musk and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis spoke by video.

The timing is the story. On Monday the European Commission designated ChatGPT a very large online search engine under the Digital Services Act, its strictest tier, giving OpenAI until January 2027 to comply.

Two of the world’s largest regulatory blocs moved in opposite directions inside 48 hours. The framework, if adopted, goes to December’s G20 leaders’ summit in Miami.

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