President Donald Trump wants to ensure the US government only gives federal contracts to artificial intelligence developers whose systems are "free from ideological bias". But the new requirements could allow his administration to impose its own worldview on tech companies' AI models – and companies may face significant challenges and risks in trying to modify their models to comply. "The suggestion that government contracts should be structured to ensure AI systems are'objective' and'free from top-down ideological bias' prompts the question: objective according to whom?" says Becca Branum at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a public policy non-profit in Washington DC. The Trump White House's AI Action Plan, released on 23 July, recommends updating federal guidelines "to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model (LLM) developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias". Trump signed a related executive order titled "Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government" on the same day.

He leads the High Level Group on Industrial Technologies, which on 24 April released a report called Re-finding industry – Defining Innovation to make recommendations on EU research and innovation priorities for industry in the next funding programme. Your report says that AI should be designated as a key enabling technology in the next funding programme, which means it is classed as a priority policy area. What does this mean in practice? 'Artificial intelligence is something relatively new and a field of strong competition, not only in the world, but also in Europe. It is therefore essential to find a common way ahead to encourage our research.

The European Commission needs to boost investment in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity research if it wants to compete in a new technology race with the US and China. This is the view of Jürgen Rüttgers, former science and technology minister in Germany, who heads an advisory group reporting to the Commission. Their work, developed by Rüttgers with 13 other figures drawn across research, industry and finance and to be published 23 February, looks at expanding industrial research in Framework Programme 9, the EU's next research and innovation programme, set to start in 2021. In an interview, Rüttgers argues that artificial intelligence should get extra EU attention. "We are very strong in [the AI] field, and we don't always see that we are strong," he said. But the global balance of power in technology is shifting.