The US leads the world in artificial intelligence technology. Decades of federal research funding, industrial and academic research, and streams of foreign talent have put America at the forefront of the current AI boom.

Yet as AI aspirations have sprouted around the globe, the US government has lacked a high-level strategy to guide American investment and prepare for the technology’s effects.

More than a dozen countries have launched AI strategies in recent years, including China, France, Canada, and South Korea. Their plans include items like new research programs, AI-enhanced public services, and smarter weaponry.

The US joined that list Monday, when President Trump signed an executive order creating a program called the American AI Initiative. It doesn’t include new funding or specific AI projects. But it orders the federal government to direct existing funds, programs, and data in support of AI research and commercialization.

The new initiative also asks agencies to help US workers adjust to jobs that have been or will be changed by AI, and to consider how the technology may require new regulations.

“AI has really become a transformative technology that’s changing industries, markets, and society,” says Lynne Parker, who leads work on AI in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “There are a number of actions that are needed to help us harness AI for the good of the American people.”

Parker previously contributed to work by the Obama administration that, a month prior to Trump’s election, led to reports on AI’s potential and societal implications, and a plan for future research. She is also working on a new national AI research strategy, slated for release soon.

Artificial intelligence is the 60-year-old quest to make machines capable of mental or physical tasks seen as emblematic of human or animal intelligence. In the past seven years a technology called machine learning, in which algorithms gain skills by digesting example data, has allowed computers to become markedly better at understanding the world. That technology has birthed software able to read medical scans, spawned virtual assistants that answer shouted trivia questions, and become the heart of every major tech company’s product strategy.

One element of the Trump administration plan would open some stocks of government data to academics and companies doing AI research. Tech companies such as Google parent Alphabet have plenty of 1s and 0s logging consumer habits stashed inside their data centers; but in other areas, such as health care, they struggle to amass the data needed to fuel AI projects.

The White House says it will ask agencies in areas such as health and transportation to release data that could advance AI research, using mechanisms that protect privacy. The results could resemble a project of the Department of Veterans Affairs, which developed a way to provide Alphabet temporary access to hundreds of thousands of anonymized health records to train AI software to predict kidney problems.

The plan Trump signed also directs federal agencies to prioritize AI when allocating their R&D budgets. It asks them to support training and fellowship programs that will help workers adjust to jobs changed by AI, and to train future AI experts and researchers.

The administration strategy also acknowledges that artificial intelligence may cause unwelcome effects.

LEARN MORE The WIRED Guide to Artificial Intelligence

White House staff will work with regulators like the Department of Transportation and the Food and Drug Administration to consider how AI technologies such as driverless cars and software that diagnoses disease may require new or revised regulations.

Researchers, civil liberties groups, and some companies have called for new ethical norms and regulation on AI. Microsoft and Amazon have asked for new federal rules on uses of facial recognition. Google released a wide-ranging policy paper on AI in January that asks for government input on safety standards for AI-powered products and services.