This piece originally appeared in National Interest.
In February, The National Interest organized a symposium on the U.S.-China technology race amidst the emergence of DeepSeek and ongoing legal battles over TikTok. We asked a variety of experts the following question: “What are the three most important technology policies that the U.S. should pursue or avoid to compete adequately with China?“ The following article is one of their responses.
Clarify and Expand Access to Training Data for AI Models
For policy related to the three pillars of artificial intelligence (AI) development (algorithms, compute, data), data access is highly sensitive to changes in the legal landscape. To this point, cutting-edge AI models have required millions to billions of pieces of diverse data over the course of the training process. In the US, leading model developers have largely relied on a mix of publicly available data scraped from the internet, as well as proprietary data acquired through licensing deals, and existing first-party data caches. The problem, however, is that every leading US model developer is being sued for copyright infringement for using data scraped from the internet.
If plaintiffs in these lawsuits prevail, the fines and other legal action could destroy much of the progress American AI model developers have made, as well as impede future AI development in the US. As federal courts wrestle with these cases, Congress should create an exception within existing copyright laws, a form of text and data mining exception aimed specifically at information used to train AI models, while also supporting the creation of technical standards to give individuals the ability to opt out of having their information used in model training. China, as well as some US allies, have updated their laws to promote model development domestically by clarifying how existing intellectual property (IP) law coexists with using data to train AI models. Falling behind the rest of the world, including our strongest competitor, when it comes to data access, could do irreparable harm to America’s future AI ambitions. Remedying this problem and balancing access to information and protections for IP in the age of AI is critical for US technological competitiveness.
Avoid Regulations Undermining End-to-End Encryption
Cybersecurity is an increasingly important paradigm for lawmakers interested in protecting the American public as well as competing in geopolitical competition with China. End-to-End Encryption (E2EE), a type of messaging that ensures information sent between two parties is private from everyone but the two exchanging parties, is vital to protecting non-public information and ensuring individual privacy. A rash of cyberespionage operations conducted in recent years by state-sponsored hacking groups aligned with nations such as China, Iran, and Russia, as well as independent groups interested in extorting public and private actors, have put millions of Americans’ personal information at risk. Such operations have also created vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure around the country, leading the US government to recommend private encrypted messaging services for official business.
