Input Stories

Artificial intelligence requires a bold, customized regulatory framework that fosters growth, innovation and leadership—not governance that is overly cautious or proscriptive, the NAM recently told the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

What’s going on: “The growing number and variety of use-cases of AI in manufacturing, on the shop floor and throughout manufacturers’ operations, require a regulatory environment that is optimized for the development and deployment of these groundbreaking technologies,” NAM Vice President of Domestic Policy Jake Kuhns told OSTP Director Michael Kratsios last week in response to a request for information on regulatory reform for AI.

• The NAM’s suggestions on AI came three months after the administration released its AI Action Plan, which NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons said in July “answers [the] call” of manufacturers “for a pro-AI policy environment.”
• They also came just days prior to the NAM’s release of Manufacturing’s Roadmap to AI and Energy Dominance, a blueprint for policymakers to follow in strengthening U.S. energy and AI dominance.

 We know AI: Manufacturers have been at the forefront of both creating and using AI, which is changing the face of nearly every industry in the world, and they know the development and utilization of the technology must remain the primary objectives in any regulatory efforts, Kuhns said.

What’s needed… A light touch will best promote AI development and use, the NAM told Kratsios.

• “[N]ew technologies do not necessarily require new regulations,” Kuhns said. “In fact, most uses of AI correspond to tasks and objectives … that industry has faced for a long time and that are thus highly likely to have already been addressed by existing laws and regulations. This means that regulators may be able to apply existing rules to their uses of AI, obviating the need for new, duplicative requirements.”
• Because AI is context-specific, its regulation should be, too: “[R]egulation should apply to a specific use of AI and be appropriately calibrated (with clear and narrow definitional language) for context and risk.”
• AI is also “an area that would significantly benefit from industry best practices.” The NAM urged OSTP to engage the National Institute of Standards and Technology to draw these up.
• Finally, regulators should “right-size” any AI regulation, as “manufacturing’s dependence on innovation underscore[s] the need for rules that enable rather than hinder manufacturers’ development and adoption of AI systems.”

 … And what’s not: A “patchwork” of numerous, overlapping and often contradictory state and federal rules on AI will hamstring rather than facilitate the technology’s growth and usefulness, the NAM went on.

• “That is why manufacturers strongly supported language in the Working Families Tax Cut Act of 2025 that would have encouraged states not to enforce their AI laws for 10 years in order to incentivize and protect AI innovation.”