President Donald Trump’s administration scored a quiet diplomatic win this week. G20 innovation ministers reached consensus on the Carolina Principles for Emerging Technologies, endorsing pro-innovation policy frameworks, foundational research, commercialization, and trusted deployment. The instinct is sound: Washington should not treat every new technology as an excuse to build another regulator.

But as government itself adopts AI, there is a prior democratic question: If voters can replace an administration, can its successor also replace the automated policies it leaves behind?