The federal government is becoming an agent of AI chaos
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. At the behest of a handful of Silicon Valley executives, officials within the Trump administration and their allies in Congress are trying yet again to prohibit states from regulating AI companies. Even as House members heard about the horrific impact of AI chatbots on children, its GOP leadership tried to insert federal pre-emption of state AI laws into the unrelated National Defense Authorization Act.
Congress must pass this bill, which is meant to authorize the work of the Pentagon, by the end of the year. Meanwhile, the White House is floating a draft executive order designed to undermine states’ ability to legislate on AI. Even if the effort to include pre-emption in the NDAA ultimately fails, Republican leadership has been clear that they will try to find other ways to block state AI legislation.
Federal pre-emption was a bad idea when the Senate first proposed and then rejected it 99-1 in July, and it is a bad idea now. Preventing states from legislating on AI wouldn’t only be dangerous for American families and affront to states’ ability to protect their citizens, but also fundamentally bad for business. Businesses need a stable and predictable regulatory environment.
Constant changes in regulation makes it more difficult to plan and impose ongoing compliance costs, the burden of which falls most heavily on smaller businesses that lack large compliance teams. Unfortunately, legislating through defense bills and governing by executive order creates significant instability. Executive orders can be reversed overnight, as we saw in January when the Trump administration revoked President Joe Biden’s 2023 executive order on artificial intelligence.
Read on livemint.com