Republican efforts to prevent states from enforcing their own AI regulations cleared key procedural hurdles on Saturday.
The rules will withhold federal broadband funding from states if they seek to enforce AI regulations over the next decade, as reportedly rewritten in an attempt by Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz to comply with budgetary rules.
And the rewrite appears to have been convened, and the senators now believe the provision is not subject to the so-called bird rules, so it can be included in the Republican “one big beautiful bill” and passed without potentially blocked by Fibusters and without the need for support from Senate Democrats.
However, it is not clear how many Republicans support the suspension. For example, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican Sen. in Tennessee, recently said, “There is no need for a moratorium that prohibits states from strengthening and protecting state citizens.”
The House has already passed a version of the bill that includes a suspension on AI regulations, but far-right representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has since declared he was “decisively opposed” as a “violation of the rights of the state,” saying it “needs to be stripped by the Senate.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson defended the provision by saying he has support from President Donald Trump, saying, “Do we need to be careful not to regulate AI because it has national security implications?”
In a recent report, Americans for Responsible Innovation (AI Regulation Advocacy Group) wrote, “The broad language of proposals could potentially wipe out the laws of a wide range of public interest states regulating AI and other algorithm-based technologies, create regulatory vacuums across multiple technology policy domains, and create regulatory vacuums without providing a federal alternative, without replacing level guardrails.”
It appears that many states are taking steps towards AI regulation. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected the famous AI safety bill last year, signing many controversial regulations on issues such as Privacy and Deepfakes. In New York, AI safety bills passed by state lawmakers await Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature. And Utah passed its own regulations on AI transparency.
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