At a two-day ministerial gathering in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the US pressed fellow G20 nations to adopt a framework called the Carolina Principles, a commitment to avoid building new AI regulatory bodies and to limit fresh rules to genuinely novel situations involving the technology.
White House science adviser Michael Kratsios, who co-hosted the meeting alongside Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, put the proposal to assembled officials. Signatory nations would promise to invest in foundational AI research, expand commercial opportunities for the technology, and reserve new regulation only for cases where existing oversight structures cannot apply.
Ministers from several major economies attended the gathering, including representatives from India, Japan, Germany, France, and South Korea. The meeting is part of a broader series of ministerial sessions taking place across US cities before President Donald Trump hosts the G20 leaders' summit in Miami in December.
The US position broadly aligns with the preferences of the world's largest AI companies, nearly all of which are American, which want fewer regulatory constraints on their businesses or the ability to shape rules as they are written.
Tensions were visible inside the room. Google DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis called on G20 officials to establish safety tests for AI systems, while Meta's Mark Zuckerberg urged countries not to restrict open-weight AI models. Elon Musk criticised the European Union's existing tech regulations, arguing that the bloc's policy slows progress for companies.
The US push also carries a competitive dimension. Analysts note that the rise of capable Chinese open-weight AI models is adding urgency to Washington's effort to keep the global technology ecosystem aligned with American platforms rather than alternative ones.
Although the G20 cannot compel member states, the language agreed in its communiqués shapes the reference points that national regulators use when they act at home, giving any agreed principles real downstream weight for policy across all participating economies.
