Why do GOP lawmakers want to ban state-level AI regulation?

Nestled deep within Republicans' massive budget reconciliation bill, unveiled this week, is a surprising measure advocates say is necessary to ensure American dominance in the growing field of artificial intelligence. The bill is designed to capitalize on the GOP's congressional majorities with provisions aimed at scaling back Medicaid and other conservative policy priorities. But it would also enact a full moratorium on any state-level AI regulation for the 10 years following the bill's enactment.

Supporters argue the measure aligns with the Trump administration's focus on American AI leadership. However, critics contend that the proposed legislation would allow a predatory tech industry to run roughshod over local efforts to grapple with the challenges of the still-developing field.

What did the commentators say?

The focus on state-level AI laws comes as AI regulation at the federal level "remains in limbo," The Hill said, leaving state legislatures to consider "nearly 700 AI bills" last year alone. "It's very difficult to imagine us figuring out how to comply with 50 different sets of regulation," said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing last week.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

That patchwork of local legislation, Altman insisted, would "slow us down at a time when I don't think it's in anyone's interest for us to slow down." A "web of inconsistent laws" will "fragment national policy, delay innovation" and "create legal and technical barriers to scaling AI systems across state lines," said Center for Data Innovation director Daniel Castro.

But by establishing the federal government as the "sole regulator for U.S. tech firms in a booming industry," critics say, the bill represents a "giveaway" to an industry that will "enable harmful and discriminatory uses of the emerging technology," said The Washington Post. The push for reduced local regulatory authority "also stands in contrast to Republicans' advocacy of states' rights in education and abortion policies."

The language of the proposed legislation is "broad enough to cover relatively new generative AI tools," said Emanuel Maiberg at 404 Media, while still applying to "technology that has existed for much longer." The result will be that it will become "impossible to enforce" laws designed to "protect people from and inform them about AI systems." Ten years of deregulation "isn't a path forward," said AI researcher Gary Marcus in an open letter signed by multiple state lawmakers. "It's an abdication of responsibility." The measure would be "deeply problematic under any circumstance," Marcus said, but it's "especially dangerous" given the way AI is already disrupting health, education, employment and other fields.

States have "quietly become the front line" in the tech regulation effort, said NYU Center on Technology policy director Scott Brennen and NYU Center for Social Media & Politics executive director Zeve Sanderson at the Post. Congress, meanwhile, has "puttered, backtracked and ultimately produced little AI regulation" and will "undermine the only concerted legislative effort aimed at balancing AI's myriad risks and benefits" without offering a solution of its own.

What next?

A state-level push for AI regulation may ultimately "force Washington to move," said the Financial Times — particularly as "some members of the MAGA crowd support a more interventionist approach." When even "anti-regulation evangelist" Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who cosponsored the bipartisan Take It Down Act to address AI-generated sexual imagery, has accepted the "necessity to act in certain cases," some form of AI regulation will likely be inevitable. This will lead to "strange alliances and unpredictable zigzags along the way."

As part of a reconciliation bill, the proposed limits on AI regulations cannot be filibustered, which could "ease their path to passage" in the broader legislation, said the Post. If the entire bill passes, the logic of including AI regulation in a bill ostensibly restricted to budgetary issues will "face scrutiny from the Senate parliamentarian."