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Business Times
15-07-2025
- Business
- Business Times
Singapore ranks among top cities for tech talent as AI job listings surge globally: report
[SINGAPORE] Singapore has emerged as a top contender in the global tech talent race, tying for fourth place in a global talent acquisition ranking, according to a report released on Wednesday (Jul 9). It tied for fourth place alongside Mumbai and Chennai – and is the only non-Indian city in the top five, indicated the report by Colliers, a global professional services and investment management company. 'Singapore is the only non-Indian market in the top five, driven by strong one-year hiring and a high volume of open job posts, signalling a concentrated effort to hire for the 10 key tech occupations,' Colliers said. Colliers said that the talent acquisition category provides insight into the markets that are currently driving job posts and recruiting activity, reflecting the global demand for tech talent. In a separate one-year hiring index, Singapore ranks eighth globally, reflecting sustained but slightly lower short-term hiring momentum compared with Indian counterparts. Its strong showing was attributed to robust one-year hiring activity and a high volume of open job postings across key technology roles – including in fast-growing areas like artificial intelligence (AI). A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU Friday, 8.30 am Asean Business Business insights centering on South-east Asia's fast-growing economies. Sign Up Sign Up Singapore ranked alongside heavyweights such as Beijing, Bengaluru and Tokyo. Other Asia-Pacific markets on the rise include Seoul and Sydney, both of which have seen increased demand for AI and cybersecurity talent. Mike Davis, Colliers' managing director of occupier services for Apac, said: 'Apac is drawing significant global attention for its unmatched tech talent density and strong venture capital momentum, particularly in India and China.' The report assessed more than 200 global markets based on these factors: talent acquisition and pipeline, venture capital funding, labour index strength and sector composition. The results underscore a widening polarisation in global tech talent – with the United States, China and India accounting for a disproportionate share of top-performing markets, the report indicated. The San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle and New York City secured three of the top five spots globally, reinforcing the US' leadership in innovation and tech workforce. Meanwhile, India and China each had five cities in the global top 50, highlighting their growing influence in digital economy growth, according to the report. Notably, 36 per cent of the world's tech talent now resides in just 10 global tech cities. 'Global tech talent is becoming increasingly concentrated in a few key hubs, with cities in the US and India leading the way. Although 22 countries have cities ranked in our top 50, the data points to a growing polarisation – especially in AI talent – towards these dominant markets,' Colliers said. India continues to cement its status as a global tech talent powerhouse, holding four of the top five spots in talent acquisition and having all six of its featured cities within the top ten. Bengaluru leads the pack. 'The proportion of younger workers in the tech sector continues to rise. Between 2014 and 2022, the number of employees under 25 grew by 9 per cent – a rate over 20 times the all-industry average. This trend is shifting attention to cities with younger talent pools, such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mexico City,' the report indicated. 'Bengaluru boasts the world's largest pool of data scientists, while Beijing leads the region in tech sector productivity. Meanwhile, cities such as Tokyo, Seoul, Sydney and Singapore are emerging as world-class innovation hubs. These markets aren't just supporting global tech expansion – they're leading it,' it added. AI shakes up talent strategy One of the most significant shifts highlighted in the report is the soaring demand for AI-related expertise. Globally, job listings that require AI skills have surged, while traditional IT postings have declined. Citing recent research by the University of Maryland, the report said the number of new AI job listings have risen 68 per cent since ChatGPT launched in late 2022. By contrast, the number of traditional IT job postings fell 27 per cent in the same period. This is putting cities with strong AI ecosystems – such as Bengaluru, New York and Sao Paulo – in the spotlight for employers. odie Poirier, the president of Colliers' occupier services for the Americas, said: 'As generative AI reshapes talent strategies, we're seeing a significant shift in how companies prioritise location decisions.' 'In the Americas, tech talent hubs like San Francisco and New York remain vital, but markets like Mexico City and Sao Paulo are quickly gaining ground. Organisations need to move fast, make data-informed choices, and align workforce planning with long-term business goals,' she added. Competition for data scientists, information security analysts Competition for data scientists is 'particularly strong,' said Colliers, noting that they are 'critical' to the AI industry, as they develop models that turn large amounts of data into insights and patterns. Demand for data scientists is expected to grow by 36 per cent through 2032 – the highest rate of any tech jobs, it added. 'Interestingly, our research finds that regional hubs of data scientists are emerging in response to increased hiring demand – driven by the need to support large language models and broader AI integration efforts,' the report indicated. It said Bengaluru has the world's largest pool of data scientists, including the biggest workforce in the Apac region. In the Americas, the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City lead, while London and Paris offer the highest concentrations of data science talent in the Europe, the Middle East and Africa region. Another role is also emerging: information security analysts. Demand for this role is 'skyrocketing' with demand jumping 33 per cent, according to the report. The cybersecurity workforce gap grew by 19.1 per cent from 2023 to 2024, said the report, citing data from ISC2, a cybersecurity professional association.
USA Today
14-07-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Mike Davis ready to return to 'being that guy' again after UFC Nashville rebound
Mike Davis met the media Saturday after his second-round TKO win over Mitch Ramirez at UFC on ESPN 70. Davis (12-3 MMA, 5-2 UFC) put together a dominant first round against Ramirez (8-3 MMA, 0-2 UFC), then stayed patient in the second until he turned up the pace with a knee up the middle and follow-up to put things away at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tenn. It was his first knockout win since October 2019. "I feel ecstatic knowing this is my comeback fight from my first loss in like five years," Davis told after his win. "I haven't been super active, but this was my second fight this year. I'm going to shoot for one more at the end of the year and we'll get it done." Davis said he heard some criticism after his loss to Fares Ziam in February, which snapped a four-fight winning streak and was his first setback in nearly six years, actually. But with an exciting finish, he thinks he might get back to a past version he saw of himself. That could make things interesting at lightweight now that there's a new class of contenders itching to emerge. "You guys wanted that guy, and I"m back to being that guy. Of course I'm going to wrestle. Of course I'm going to do jiu-jitsu. I know people don't like that too much, but that's what wins fights. This is fight IQ time. It's not about going in there and slugging it out. I've got to win. If I've got to slow you down in the first and bang you up in the second, that's what's going to happen." Check out Davis' post-fight interview in the video below.
Yahoo
12-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
UFC on ESPN 70 video: Mike Davis swarms Mitch Ramirez for TKO after flying knee
Mike Davis returned to the win column with an impressive finish of Mitch Ramirez. The lightweight bout was the second preliminary fight at UFC on ESPN 70 at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tenn. Davis (12-3 MMA, 5-2 UFC), who went back to the drawing board after his last fight, showed improvements across the board leading up to a TKO finish of Ramirez (8-2 MMA, 0-1 UFC) at 4:08 of Round 2. Advertisement The first round was one-way traffic from Davis, as he quickly got the fight to the ground and latched on to Ramirez's back for a majority of the round while hunting for a rear-naked choke. In Round 2, striking was the path both fighters chose. Although Davis took his share of strikes from Ramirez, he kept engaging, and started to pull away as the round wore on. Once he got Ramirez close to the fence, Davis jumped forward with a flying knee that landed clean, and the flurry of punches that followed dropped Ramirez for the finish. Check out video of the stoppage below (via X): Davis bounces back into the win column after a decision loss to Fares Ziam in February. In preparation for this fight, he added more muscle to his frame in order not to get overpowered by lightweight opposition – a move that worked out very well against Ramirez. Advertisement Up-to-the-minute UFC On ESPN 70 results Mike Davis def. Mitch Ramirez via TKO (punches) - Round 2, 4:08 Fatima Kline def. Melissa Martinez via TKO (head kick and punches) – Round 3, 2:36 This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: UFC Nashville video: Mike Davis TKOs Mitch Ramirez
The Verge
11-07-2025
- Politics
- The Verge
The unholy alliance that killed the AI moratorium
At 8AM last Monday, as he prepared for a third marathon day of covering the Senate's chaotic legislative battle over the Big Beautiful Bill, Steve Bannon's phone rang. It was Mike Davis, the head of the Article III Project and a lawyer for Donald Trump, with an urgent request: he needed to take over the first hour of War Room to raise hell about a ban on states' AI laws buried in the Big Beautiful Bill. 'We have to go in hard on this thing,' he said. That was a huge ask, Bannon told The Verge. He wasn't a fan of the AI moratorium, or Big Tech in general, but War Room was built to push its fan base into pressuring Republicans to vote the MAGA way in real time; the Big Beautiful Bill had plenty of things to press them into supporting. And that morning, everyone believed the moratorium issue had been settled: Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a prominent Republican AI hawk who'd initially criticized the ban, had spent the weekend negotiating a compromise with Sen. Ted Cruz that cut the ban to five years and spared certain child safety laws at the state level. If Blackburn was now voting for a moratorium, surely the compromise was acceptable to MAGA populists. But Davis' plea made him reconsider. 'Is it at that stage?' Bannon asked Davis. 'This compromise is terrible,' Davis responded. 'It's actually worse than the original. We've got to kill it.' 'This compromise is terrible. It's actually worse than the original.' And thus began a 24-hour campaign to reverse what should have been the AI industry's biggest political win to date. That morning, there seemed to be enough votes in the Republican-held Senate to pass the moratorium, which would have prevented states from writing or enforcing their own laws regulating AI for the next five years, while the federal government figured out a nationwide regulatory framework. (The penalty for breaking the moratorium: states would lose access to a $500 million fund for AI development, which may have been carved out of rural broadband funding.) Even if the Democrats were completely unified against it — and considering that it was a Trump-driven bill, they probably would be — the Republicans had the numbers, and could even afford to lose Sens. Josh Hawley and Rand Paul, traditional Big Tech haters who'd voiced their opposition. But by 4AM the next day, after a record-setting 45 rounds of votes and a lobbying meltdown in Washington, virtually the entire GOP had flipped. The bill had passed, but the moratorium had not: 99 out of 100 senators voted for an amendment, sponsored by Blackburn herself, that cut the provision out of the bill. According to Republican staffers and conservative tech lobbyists, who were trying desperately to track the votes in real time, this was entirely due to the influence of Bannon and Davis, who spent the entire day battling the moratorium on two fronts. 'We lit up their Senate switchboards, all day and all night.' In public, they whipped the 'War Room posse' into a frenzy, with Bannon, Davis, and other guests railing on-air for hours about the 'AI amnesty' that the tech companies were trying to secure for themselves. '3,000 people made 9,000 contacts with their home state senators,' Davis told The Verge afterward. 'We lit up their Senate switchboards, all day and all night.' Meanwhile, behind the scenes, they were working backchannels — persuading Blackburn to back out of the deal, strategizing with staffers and aides, and even going all the way to Trump himself, imploring his team over the phone to hold back and stay silent on this specific issue. Getting the AI moratorium killed was victory enough. But getting nearly every Republican senator to cave at 2AM — save for Thom Tillis, who'd just announced his retirement — was something special for the MAGA populists at war against the tech right. 'We really saw who are the bitches of Big Tech.' 'I call it the Great Unmasking, because we really saw who are the bitches of Big Tech. And Ted Cruz was the biggest loser in this,' Bannon said. Cruz's proposal, he claimed, would have forced red states to choose between protecting their citizens from AI, or getting their citizens access to rural internet. 'This was absolutely set up to be the cruelest thing you could possibly do. And that's why he's nothing but a fucking pimp. And you can quote me.' Everyone involved in AI policy, whether they're lawmakers, interest groups, or industry players, agrees on a few things conceptually. There should be laws regulating AI. There should be laws regulating AI at the federal level. The laws should be thoughtful. The law should not contradict itself. But that's about it; the rest of it is a messy battleground. As with the legislative struggle over digital privacy, there's a brewing fight over federal preemption — that is, whether federal law overrules and excludes state law on the same matter. Right now, for instance, there's a piecemeal state-by-state approach to digital privacy, and passage of a federal privacy law is stymied partly by controversy around preemption. Consumer advocacy groups want federal law to be as stringent as what has passed in states like California; otherwise, preemption would roll back protections for Americans. Excluding preemption theoretically means that the federal government provides a floor and states can experiment with increased levels of privacy (think about how the federal minimum wage versus the state minimum wage works). In practice, though, companies that handle data have to comply with an increasingly complex patchwork of privacy regulations. The AI companies are eager not to get into even more of a quagmire, one that is targeted at them specifically. The 10-year moratorium was proposed last year by the right-leaning R Street Institute, floated by Cruz during a Senate hearing last month, and added to the House Energy and Commerce Committee's final draft of the Big Beautiful Bill. The justification behind it was this: The best kind of regulation of AI would take place at the federal level and apply broadly across the United States instead of having a piecemeal approach from state to state. Laws take time to write, especially ones on the federal level. During the moratorium, Congress would have time to put together one set of rules, and in the meantime, the AI industry wouldn't have to tie itself in knots trying to comply with 50 different sets of laws. This justification was not well received in many quarters. Piecemeal approaches on all kinds of digital issues (privacy, child safety, and more) have been inconvenient but not existential for industry. But more to the point, 10, even five years is just a very long time to get an extension on Congress' homework. With the massive impact that AI is already having in all corners of life, the moratorium was a nonstarter for a broad swath of Americans. It was no surprise that there were objections from consumer protection groups and state legislators already trying to write their own laws in a regulatory vacuum. But the moratorium also happened to draw heavy Republican opposition, a phenomenon rarely seen these days in a party loyal to Trump: in the run-up to the voting period, 37 state attorneys general and 17 governors sent letters to Senate Republican leaders, urging them to get rid of the moratorium and protect states' rights. The MAGA mediasphere did not like it, either, and they'd glommed onto the issue in early June when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) admitted something embarrassing: she hadn't known the moratorium was in the 940-page bill. 'I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there,' she posted on X on June 3rd, a full two weeks after the tax bill passed the House, arguing that it was too dangerous to 'tie states' hands' for the next 10 years. 'When the OBBB comes back to the House for approval after Senate changes,' she threatened, 'I will not vote for it with this in it.' Considering the GOP holds the House by a historically slim 8-vote margin, losing Greene would throw the OBBB's passage in jeopardy. The moratorium's proponents had pulled some procedural shenanigans However, it wasn't as simple as deleting the offending clauses. The moratorium's proponents had pulled some procedural shenanigans by locking it into the House's version of the Big Beautiful Bill, and to remove it, the Senate needed to pass an amendment that explicitly cut out the language. But they only had until July 4th to pass the bill, a deadline imposed by the White House, and there were already too many amendments piling up in the upcoming 'vote-a-rama' — a Senate procedure that's also a unique form of psychological torture. Senators are allowed to propose an unlimited number of amendments to any budget-related bill that's made it to the floor — either to make a political point, or occasionally, to pass an actual piece of legislation — and force their colleagues to consider, debate, and vote on every single one, even if it takes endless days to do so. Ideally, it would crush their opponents' will to live, or at least get them to change their votes. (The sleep deprivation torture had already started: the Democrats had used a procedure that required the Senate clerks to read the entire 940-page bill before they could start voting on amendments. It took 16 hours.) Blackburn had initially been the Republicans' most outspoken critic of the moratorium, but once she made her deal with Cruz, a ban — reduced down to five years, instead of 10 — was almost certain, even though Democrats like Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) were now submitting amendments to remove it. As long as Republicans held the party line, the moratorium was in. Sure, Greene was a potential spoiler in the House, but Trump had just forced Tillis into retirement after the North Carolina Republican criticized the OBBB's Medicare hikes. 'I don't want to suggest that that's going to happen to Greene,' Adam Thierer, a fellow at the conservative R Street Institute and one of the original proponents of the moratorium, told The Verge on Monday afternoon, 'but I think there's a lot of Republicans that live in fear of being primaried based upon opposition to certain Trump priorities.' Bannon and Davis weren't having it, however. The moment that Davis went off air on Monday morning, he put in a call to Blackburn and patched her through to Bannon. 'I said, 'Listen, our audience loves you and we have your back,'' said Bannon. ''We will make as many phone calls, and send as many text messages [as you need]. You do what you have to do, but don't think you have to compromise.'' (Blackburn's office did not respond to a request for comment.) By 2PM, the Republican-connected tech lobbyists had started to fret. 'Sounds like Sen. Blackburn will be offering an amendment to strip,' one lobbyist texted The Verge. 'Thought we were good on the amendment, but who knows.' Thierer, too, had no idea what was happening in the Senate, which was wild because the R Street Institute had virtually written the blueprint for the moratorium in 2024. 'At this point, every couple of hours, the situation on the ground appears to change. And it's like you have to date-stamp your thoughts on a millisecond-by-millisecond basis because the roller coaster continues,' he said. 'I've almost given up trying to write anything that's going to be fresh longer than 24 hours on this.' Around 6PM, Bannon made a stunning announcement on War Room: Blackburn had decided to withdraw her support from the moratorium and would vote against it. For a while, it wasn't clear whether Bannon was correct: a Republican aide told reporters that Blackburn was still in, and Blackburn hadn't made a statement on it yet. But Bannon had been on the phone with her right before he dropped that bombshell. 'I said it because she told me she was a no,' he told The Verge. It took two hours for Blackburn to officially confirm she was backing out of the compromise, sending out a statement at 8PM saying that the Cruz provision was 'not acceptable' and 'could allow Big Tech to continue to exploit kids, creators, and conservatives.' Then, at 9PM, she made it clear that she really opposed the moratorium: she officially filed her own amendment that would strip the language from the bill entirely, with Cantwell as a cosponsor. With Blackburn, Hawley, and Paul joining the Democrats, the Senate was unofficially deadlocked at 50-50. When Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), one of the more moderate members of the GOP caucus, shockingly signed onto the amendment, the moratorium was probably dead, though Cruz was still upbeat. 'The night is young,' he told a Punchbowl reporter, as the vote-a-rama period hit 10PM with no end in sight. Davis, in the meantime, had been making calls to the White House. Trump had reportedly given his blessing to the Cruz-Blackburn five-year compromise over the weekend. The pro-moratorium interest groups were hoping that he'd publicly back the bill, which would have very likely whipped MAGA loyalists in line. But Davis was a formidable foe — he was close enough to Trump himself to be able to text the administration. 'These AI oligarchs hate us and now they want to steal every copyright in the world' 'I told the key people in the Trump administration not to support this,' Davis told The Verge. 'These AI oligarchs hate us and now they want to steal every copyright in the world, harm kids for profit, and cancel conservatives and others with whom they disagree. Why the hell do we want to give them 10 years of AI amnesty?' The rumor had been that Trump would make a statement at 1AM, effectively giving the Republicans cover to vote for the president's agenda. 1AM came and went, and Trump did not release a statement. There was nothing by 2AM. By 3AM, it was becoming clear that he wouldn't weigh in at all. And at 4AM, with no president to hide behind, the rest of the Senate Republicans gave up. The death of the AI moratorium marks a pivotal moment in the feud between the MAGA populists and the tech bros. Sure, Bannon and the rest of the populists have railed against the 'broligarchy' on their podcasts since Trump's victory in November, but the real action had been happening behind closed doors for months. The drama over Trump's (dubiously legal) firings of Librarian of Congress and Register of Copyrights, for instance, started when the Copyright Office released a prepublication version of a report interpreting copyright law in a way that was somewhat unfavorable to AI companies. At first it seemed that the tech right, led by Elon Musk, had taken over the Copyright Office. Then it became clear that MAGAworld had opportunistically landed a blow against Silicon Valley by filling the positions with anti-Big Tech government lawyers. Elon Musk's exile a month later was set in motion by populists inside the White House — who are ideologically aligned with Bannon and others — who'd convinced Trump that Musk's people were disloyal. But this is the most meaningful and visible political win that the populists have notched in their feud with the tech industry. They would have won the battle if only four GOP senators had voted no. But they got 52 GOP senators voting no, including Cruz, who'd written the Senate's moratorium in the first place — a blatant demonstration of MAGA political capital. Bannon was more than happy to take a victory lap and claim the win. 'This is, I believe, our Lexington and Concord against AI,' he said afterward. 'I'm not against AI. I'm against a completely unregulated AI driven by four people' — Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Dario Amodei, and David Sacks — 'who do not have the best interests of our country or her citizens at the forefront of their mind.' (He added one more later: Demis Hassabis, the cofounder of Google DeepMind.) And in case it seems like Bannon and Davis might be too self-congratulatory, the interest groups, too, were quick to credit them the next morning. 'It basically went down the way Mike Davis and Steve Bannon describe [it] on Bannon's show,' said Jason Van Beek, the chief government affairs officer at the Future of Life Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group dedicated to mitigating AI risks. He then sent The Verge a link to the latest episode of War Room.
Qatar Tribune
06-07-2025
- Business
- Qatar Tribune
How a GOP rift over tech regulation doomed a ban on state AI laws in Trump's tax bill
Agencies A controversial bid to deter states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade seemed on its way to passing as the Republican tax cut and spending bill championed by President Donald Trump worked its way through the U.S. Senate. But as the bill neared a final vote, a relentless campaign against it by a constellation of conservatives — including Republican governors, lawmakers, think tanks and social groups — had been eroding support. One, conservative activist Mike Davis, appeared on the show of right-wing podcaster Steve Bannon, urging viewers to call their senators to reject this 'AI amnesty' for 'trillion-dollar Big Tech monopolists.' He said he also texted with Trump directly, advising the president to stay neutral on the issue despite what Davis characterized as significant pressure from White House AI czar David Sacks, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and others. Conservatives passionate about getting rid of the provision had spent weeks fighting others in the party who favored the legislative moratorium because they saw it as essential for the country to compete against China in the race for AI dominance. The schism marked the latest and perhaps most noticeable split within the GOP about whether to let states continue to put guardrails on emerging technologies or minimize such the end, the advocates for guardrails won, revealing the enormous influence of a segment of the Republican Party that has come to distrust Big Tech. They believe states must remain free to protect their citizens against potential harms of the industry, whether from AI, social media or emerging technologies. 'Tension in the conservative movement is palpable,' said Adam Thierer of the R Street Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank. Thierer first proposed the idea of the AI moratorium last year. He noted 'the animus surrounding Big Tech' among many Republicans. 'That was the differentiating factor.'The Heritage Foundation, children's safety groups and Republican state lawmakers, governors and attorneys general all weighed in against the AI moratorium. Democrats, tech watchdogs and some tech companies opposed it, too. Sensing the moment was right on Monday night, Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who opposed the AI provision and had attempted to water it down, teamed up with Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington to suggest striking the entire proposal. By morning, the provision was removed in a 99-1 whirlwind demise of a provision that initially had the backing of House and Senate leadership and the White House disappointed other conservatives who felt it gave China, a main AI competitor, an advantage. Ryan Fournier, chairman of Students for Trump and chief marketing officer of the startup Uncensored AI, had supported the moratorium, writing on X that it 'stops blue states like California and New York from handing our future to Communist China.' 'Republicans are that way ... I get it,' he said in an interview, but added there needs to be 'one set of rules, not 50' for AI innovation to be companies, tech trade groups, venture capitalists and multiple Trump administration figures had voiced their support for the provision that would have blocked states from passing their own AI regulations for years. They argued that in the absence of federal standards, letting the states take the lead would leave tech innovators mired in a confusing patchwork of rules. Lutnick, the commerce secretary, posted that the provision 'makes sure American companies can develop cutting-edge tech for our military, infrastructure, and critical industries — without interference from anti-innovation politicians.' AI czar Sacks had also publicly supported the measure. After the Senate passed the bill without the AI provision, the White House responded to an inquiry for Sacks with the president's position, saying Trump 'is fully supportive of the Senate-passed version of the One, Big, Beautiful Bill.'Acknowledging defeat of his provision on the Senate floor, Cruz noted how pleased China, liberal politicians and 'radical left-wing groups' would be to hear the news. But Blackburn pointed out that the federal government has failed to pass laws that address major concerns about AI, such as keeping children safe and securing copyright protections. 'But you know who has passed it?' she said. 'The states.'Conservatives distrusting Big Tech for what they see as social media companies stifling speech during the COVID-19 pandemic and surrounding elections said that tech companies shouldn't get a free pass, especially on something that carries as much risk as AI. Many who opposed the moratorium also brought up preserving states' rights, though proponents countered that AI issues transcend state borders and Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce. Eric Lucero, a Republican state lawmaker in Minnesota, noted that many other industries already navigate different regulations established by both state and local jurisdictions. 'I think everyone in the conservative movement agrees we need to beat China,' said Daniel Cochrane from the Heritage Foundation. 'I just think we have different prescriptions for doing so.' Many argued that in the absence of federal legislation, states were best positioned to protect citizens from the potential harms of AI technology. 'We have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years and giving it free rein and tying states hands is potentially dangerous,' Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on Republican, Texas state Sen. Angela Paxton, wrote to Cruz and his counterpart, Sen. John Cornyn, urging them to remove the moratorium. She and other conservatives said some sort of federal standard could help clarify the landscape around AI and resolve some of the party's disagreements.
