Latest news with #AIregulation
Gizmodo
a day ago
- Business
- Gizmodo
Ted Cruz's Ban on AI Regulation Gets Last-Minute Boot From ‘Big, Beautiful Bill'
Donald Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' is packed with all sorts of problematic policies, but the Senate did manage to successfully strip it of one: the 10-year ban on state-level artificial intelligence laws. During the Senate's 'vote-a-rama,' it voted 99 to 1 to adopt an amendment that will strike the restrictions on state-level regulations from the spending bill. The provision, which received a considerable amount of support from Big Tech firms and was championed by Texas Senator Ted Cruz, would have prevented any state that takes funding from a federal broadband fund from passing any legislation that would regulate AI within their borders. The amendment to strip that language out of the bill was proposed by Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn and received near-unanimous support, with Republican Thom Tillis standing as the lone 'nay' vote. According to Reuters, Ted Cruz lamented the decision to kill the restrictions entirely, as he had proposed a compromise that would have resulted in a five-year ban and allowed states to regulate a narrow band of issues related to AI, like combating deepfakes of artists, but ultimately voted in favor of striking it entirely. But hey, everyone laments Ted Cruz so, call it even. It's unclear if Trump really cares about this particular provision personally (he opted not to weigh in on the issue publicly), but the folks he keeps around him seem pretty disappointed that the provision was killed. According to Bloomberg, White House technology advisers Michael Kratsios and David Sacks both supported the ban. Sacks, speaking recently at an AWS Summit event, warned that regulating AI now would be akin to 'killing this thing in the cradle.' Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also backed the measure that initially appeared in the bill, claiming that it was important for national security to prevent states from passing their own AI legislation. He's called for a national-level, comprehensive AI regulation, but that is notably a thing that has not happened yet. Ditching the provision is a win for states, which are moving much faster on regulating AI than their federal counterparts. A total of 47 states have already proposed some form of AI-related legislation, and nearly 1 in 5 have already enacted those proposals into law—including several red states, which flies against the Republican narrative that it's the Californias of the world that are cramping AI's style. This also means states won't be held hostage if they access Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding, which is designed to expand broadband internet access.
CNET
a day ago
- Business
- CNET
Congress Dropped a Plan to Block State AI Rules. Why That Matters for Consumers
After months of debate, a plan in Congress to block states from regulating artificial intelligence was pulled from the big federal budget bill this week. The proposed 10-year moratorium would have prevented states from enforcing rules and laws on AI if the state accepted federal funding for broadband access. The issue exposed divides among technology experts and politicians, with some Senate Republicans joining Democrats in opposing the move. The Senate eventually voted 99-1 to remove the proposal from the bill, which also includes the extension of the 2017 federal tax cuts and cuts to services like Medicaid and SNAP. Congressional Republican leaders have said they want to have the measure on President Donald Trump's desk by July 4. Tech companies and many Congressional Republicans supported the moratorium, saying it would prevent a "patchwork" of rules and regulations across states and local governments that could hinder the development of AI -- especially in the context of competition with China. Critics, including consumer advocates, said states should have a free hand to protect people from potential issues with the fast-growing technology. "The Senate came together tonight to say that we can't just run over good state consumer protection laws," Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat, said in a statement. "States can fight robocalls, deepfakes and provide safe autonomous vehicle laws. This also allows us to work together nationally to provide a new federal framework on artificial intelligence that accelerates US leadership in AI while still protecting consumers." Despite the moratorium being pulled from this bill, the debate over how the government can appropriately balance consumer protection and supporting technology innovation will likely continue. "There have been a lot of discussions at the state level, and I would think that it's important for us to approach this problem at multiple levels," said Anjana Susarla, a professor at Michigan State University who studies AI. "We could approach it at the national level. We can approach it at the state level, too. I think we need both." Several states have already started regulating AI The proposed moratorium would have barred states from enforcing any regulation, including those already on the books. The exceptions are rules and laws that make things easier for AI development and those that apply the same standards to non-AI models and systems that do similar things. These kinds of regulations are already starting to pop up. The biggest focus is not in the US, but in Europe, where the European Union has already implemented standards for AI. But states are starting to get in on the action. Colorado passed a set of consumer protections last year, set to go into effect in 2026. California adopted more than a dozen AI-related laws last year. Other states have laws and regulations that often deal with specific issues such as deepfakes or require AI developers to publish information about their training data. At the local level, some regulations also address potential employment discrimination if AI systems are used in hiring. "States are all over the map when it comes to what they want to regulate in AI," said Arsen Kourinian, a partner at the law firm Mayer Brown. So far in 2025, state lawmakers have introduced at least 550 proposals around AI, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In the House committee hearing last month, Rep. Jay Obernolte, a Republican from California, signaled a desire to get ahead of more state-level regulation. "We have a limited amount of legislative runway to be able to get that problem solved before the states get too far ahead," he said. Read more: AI Essentials: 29 Ways to Make Gen AI Work for You, According to Our Experts While some states have laws on the books, not all of them have gone into effect or seen any enforcement. That limits the potential short-term impact of a moratorium, said Cobun Zweifel-Keegan, managing director in Washington for IAPP. "There isn't really any enforcement yet." A moratorium would likely deter state legislators and policymakers from developing and proposing new regulations, Zweifel-Keegan said. "The federal government would become the primary and potentially sole regulator around AI systems," he said. What a moratorium on state AI regulation means AI developers have asked for any guardrails placed on their work to be consistent and streamlined. "We need, as an industry and as a country, one clear federal standard, whatever it may be," Alexandr Wang, founder and CEO of the data company Scale AI, told lawmakers during an April hearing. "But we need one, we need clarity as to one federal standard and have preemption to prevent this outcome where you have 50 different standards." During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in May, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, that an EU-style regulatory system "would be disastrous" for the industry. Altman suggested instead that the industry develop its own standards. Asked by Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, if industry self-regulation is enough at the moment, Altman said he thought some guardrails would be good, but, "It's easy for it to go too far. As I have learned more about how the world works, I am more afraid that it could go too far and have really bad consequences." (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, parent company of CNET, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) Not all AI companies are backing a moratorium, however. In a New York Times op-ed, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called it "far too blunt an instrument," saying the federal government should create transparency standards for AI companies instead. "Having this national transparency standard would help not only the public but also Congress understand how the technology is developing, so that lawmakers can decide whether further government action is needed." A proposed 10-year moratorium on state AI laws is now in the hands of the US Senate, where its Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation has already held hearings on artificial intelligence. Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images Concerns from companies, both the developers that create AI systems and the "deployers" who use them in interactions with consumers, often stem from fears that states will mandate significant work such as impact assessments or transparency notices before a product is released, Kourinian said. Consumer advocates have said more regulations are needed and hampering the ability of states could hurt the privacy and safety of users. A moratorium on specific state rules and laws could result in more consumer protection issues being dealt with in court or by state attorneys general, Kourinian said. Existing laws around unfair and deceptive practices that are not specific to AI would still apply. "Time will tell how judges will interpret those issues," he said. Susarla said the pervasiveness of AI across industries means states might be able to regulate issues such as privacy and transparency more broadly, without focusing on the technology. But a moratorium on AI regulation could lead to such policies being tied up in lawsuits. "It has to be some kind of balance between 'we don't want to stop innovation,' but on the other hand, we also need to recognize that there can be real consequences," she said. Much policy around the governance of AI systems does happen because of those so-called technology-agnostic rules and laws, Zweifel-Keegan said. "It's worth also remembering that there are a lot of existing laws and there is a potential to make new laws that don't trigger the moratorium but do apply to AI systems as long as they apply to other systems," he said.
Washington Post
a day ago
- Business
- Washington Post
In dramatic reversal, Senate kills AI-law moratorium
The U.S. Senate voted 99-1 in the predawn hours Tuesday to strip from the sprawling tax and immigration bill a provision that would have blocked states from regulating artificial intelligence for the next decade. The provision's resounding defeat came after Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) backed out of a compromise she had previously struck with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that would have reduced the pause to five years from the original 10 and exempted some categories of AI regulations.
The Verge
a day ago
- Politics
- The Verge
Senate drops plan to ban state AI laws
The US Senate has voted overwhelmingly to remove a moratorium on states regulating AI systems from the Republican 'big, beautiful bill.' Legislators agreed by a margin of 99 to 1 to drop the controversial proposal during a protracted fight over the omnibus budget bill, which is still under debate. The vote followed failed attempts to revise the rule in a way that would placate holdouts, particularly Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), one of the moratorium's first opponents. Over the weekend, Blackburn struck a deal with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) that would have cut the moratorium to five years and allowed states to continue enforcing AI laws that handled online child safety as well as individuals' names, images, and likenesses. But after a day of furious backlash from the populist right, driven primarily by MAGA internet powerhouses Steve Bannon and Mike Davis, Blackburn relented at the last minute — and chose, instead, to attach her name to a Democrat-sponsored amendment that sought to remove the bill altogether. 'While I appreciate Chairman Cruz's efforts to find acceptable language that allows states to protect their citizens from the abuses of AI, the current language is not acceptable to those who need those provisions the most,' she said in a statement on Monday night. 'This provision could allow Big Tech to continue to exploit kids, creators, and conservatives.' Early fellow GOP defectors included Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME); Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), an anti-tech hawk; and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who raised concerns about federal overreach. But ultimately, nearly everyone agreed on removing the AI provisions — the lone vote against it was from Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC). The Senate must still vote on the budget reconciliation vote, after which it will return to the House before being passed to President Donald Trump's desk. The House of Representatives quietly lodged the first draft of the moratorium in its version of Trump's funding megabill, passing it almost entirely along party lines by a vote of 215-214 in May. The stated goal was to avoid a patchwork of state AI regulations that could inhibit industry growth. But the plan was contentious even before the Senate began formal debate on its version, which required states to avoid regulating AI and 'automated decision systems' if they wished to receive funding for broadband programs. It became a flash point in an already heated fight over the bill, resulting in furious backroom negotiations, an apparent deal, and then a daylong concerted effort to tank the bill. Senate Republicans had already fractured over several amendments inside the bill, but the addition of the AI moratorium turned the whip count into a trainwreck of competing interests — particularly within the Republican faction normally opposed to Big Tech and federal overreach. In a letter sent to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) last week, several GOP senators, including Hawley and Paul, joined Blackburn in voicing their opposition to the bill for varying reasons, including their concern that it would automatically curtail preexisting state AI laws. (Tennessee, for instance, passed a law in 2024 that protected individuals' likenesses from being used by generative AI.) On the other hand, Cruz, the chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee and widely considered as a hard-right figure, authored an amendment that would have specifically barred states with AI laws from accessing federal funds earmarked for AI development. The moratorium has proven especially unpopular with state-level GOP figures: last week, 37 state attorneys general and 17 governors bombarded Thune with letters urging him to drop the clause. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, Trump's former White House press secretary, went so far as to author a Washington Post op-ed denouncing the bill as removing states' abilities to protect their own citizens. Other critics contended that the bill's definition of 'AI' is broad enough to ban entire swathes of software- and internet-related regulations, including Republican-backed state-level online child safety laws.
TechCrunch
a day ago
- Business
- TechCrunch
US senate removes controversial ‘AI moratorium' from budget bill
U.S. senators voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to remove a controversial 10-year ban on states' abilities to regulate AI from the Trump administration's 'Big Beautiful Bill,' reports Axios. The provision to the reconciliation bill was introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Many prominent Silicon Valley executives — including OpenAI's Sam Altman, Anduril's Palmer Luckey, and a16z's Marc Andreessen — were in favor of the so-called 'AI moratorium,' which they said would prevent states from forming an unworkable patchwork of regulation that could stifle AI innovation. Opposition to the provision became a bipartisan issue, as most Democrats and many Republicans warned that the ban on state regulation would harm consumers, and let powerful AI companies operate with little oversight. Critics also objected to Cruz's plan to tie compliance with federal broadband funding. After going back and forth over the provision, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Monday offered an amendment to strip the provision alongside Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA). Blackburn originally opposed the provision, but she came to an agreement with Cruz over the weekend that shortened the proposed ban from ten years to five. She then pulled her support for the provision entirely on Monday. The Senate voted 99-1 to strip the AI moratorium.
