Even though neither of the candidates on major presidential tickets are talking much about AI, it’s a huge area of concern for tech leaders. Nearly three in four tech leaders said the election will have a major impact on whether the U.S. tech sector will be able to stay ahead of global competitors, according to a poll published this week by EY US. Specifically, they said, it will impact cybersecurity and data protection, AI and machine learning, and user data and content oversight.

There are very few issues that Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are even remotely close to agreeing on, so this result from the poll isn’t a surprise. But it’s worth taking a look at what may happen in terms of tech policy if either candidate is elected.

As a part of President Joe Biden’s administration, Harris supported the executive order he signed last year to place guardrails on the use and development of AI. The executive order mandates guidelines and standards for government use of AI, requires government oversight of AI models that could pose a risk to national security, and essentially sets the stage to ensure privacy, equity and civil rights are protected through the use of AI technology. Harris spoke about the order days after it was signed at the Global Summit on AI Safety in London, saying it is possible to ensure ordinary people are protected from AI misuse—like explicit deepfake images of them being shared, or insurance claims being denied because of faulty AI algorithms—and not stifle broader innovation. When Biden signed the executive order last year, several tech CEOs were immediately on board and had been working with the federal government to develop AI regulations.

Trump said last December he plans to cancel Biden’s executive order if elected, and that he’d also “ban the use of AI to censor the speech of American citizens on day one.” There hasn’t been much else published about what Trump would do instead, though a rundown by law firm Winston Strawn indicates he has said that AI’s power to distort can be “scary,” and the threat AI could pose to security requires immediate attention. When Trump was president in 2019, he signed an executive order for the federal government to direct more funding to AI R&D and work toward building governance standards. Tech executive and self proclaimed “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk has been close to the Trump campaign, and Musk has used his social platform X to share his view that the First Amendment can protect campaign-related AI deepfakes and reproductions of copyrighted images. Trump has not endorsed Musk’s views, but he could be influenced by them.

But no matter who wins the election, 87% of tech leaders told EY they plan to increase AI investments by 50% or more in the next year, with most saying they want to reallocate existing resources toward AI. So even if the election has a huge impact on larger policy, businesses will stay on the journey to implement the technology to make their work more efficient and useful.

Even for a technology like AI, which many are committed to investing in, companies need to examine the ROI for systems they want to adopt. I talked to Anurag Malik, president and CTO of legal AI platform company ContractPodAi, about how to........

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