The United States is set to ask the G20 not to build any new institutions for governing artificial intelligence. A White House official outlined this position before a two-day meeting that opened in North Carolina, which is the first in a series leading up to the G20 leaders' summit in Miami in December. This argument is procedural rather than substantive, making it effective as Washington is not proposing its preferred rules but rather pressing member countries not to establish bodies that could write rules at all.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and White House technology adviser Michael Kratsios are hosting the meeting, which includes attendees such as Sam Altman and Jensen Huang in person, and Elon Musk by video. This unusual composition for an intergovernmental meeting hints at how the administration views the subject. Canada, on the other hand, has signaled it will push for a balance between innovation and public trust and safety, while China's embassy did not comment on whether it would attend.
The G20 has no power to compel action, which cuts both ways: it cannot create a regulator, but the language it agrees upon becomes a reference point for national governments when they act at home. The administration previously made a similar case at the Paris AI summit, where JD Vance warned against paralyzing the technology with regulation, and the US declined to sign an international statement on regulated AI use.
What has changed is the forum and the stakes. A G20 process produces communiqué language that shapes what national regulators believe they have a license to do, and an agreed sentence about international oversight is harder to undo than a summit speech. Europe arrives at this meeting having already built what the US is arguing against, with the AI Act in force and the Digital Services Act being enforced against platforms like ChatGPT.
The timing is also awkward, given that the chair of the Financial Stability Board told G20 finance ministers that AI-driven cyber risk is the most immediate threat to financial stability, through the kind of multilateral body the US wants left alone. A United Nations panel has separately warned that AI development is outpacing both scientific understanding and government policy, making the case for new institutions.
For European regulators, the practical question is narrower than the principle. Nothing agreed in Miami would undo the AI Act, but a G20 consensus against international oversight makes European enforcement look like an outlier. The counter-argument is that institutions built now would be designed around a technology nobody fully understands, staffed by people appointed for a landscape that will have changed, and slow to correct once established.
There is also a competitive dimension, with countries hosting leading model developers having less to gain from international oversight. Developing economies have a different interest, with countries that neither build models nor regulate them effectively having the most to gain from international standards but lacking the capacity to insist on them.
Whether the US position holds depends on who else wants a fight. The G20 works by consensus, and a communiqué that says nothing about AI governance is a win for the argument that nothing needs governing. Between now and the Miami summit, the question is whether any member is willing to spend the diplomatic capital required to write a sentence the United States has said it will not accept.
Questo articolo è stato scritto con l'assistenza dell'IA.
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