AI has been taking over workspaces and evolving much faster than the gears of government typically grind, so regulation hasn’t caught up to its capabilities. While fights are happening all over the world to address copyright concerns, the US federal government has recently been intent on a laissez-faire approach.
That became especially obvious when Republicans’ “big, beautiful” bill proposed straight-up barring states and localities from implementing their own regulations for a full decade if they accepted certain federal funding for AI infrastructure. That provision has just been struck from the bill, though, as the Senate voted 99-1 to cut the moratorium.
The idea had critics on both sides of the aisle. While Democrats have pushed back on the bill in general, the AI provision in particular has seen conservative blowback as well. According to a report by the Associated Press, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and “a majority of GOP governors” wrote a letter opposing it.
A few conservatives tried to salvage it, but the effort didn’t go anywhere. Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn called for a revised proposal that would shorten it and exempt laws relating to things like “deceptive practices” and “child sexual abuse material,” but worked out an amendment with Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell Monday to strike the whole thing. Given the ethical, intellectual, and environmental concerns raised by generative AI as it rapidly develops, it hardly seems an appropriate time to muzzle regulators.
Big tech isn’t likely to be thrilled. AI proponents tend to downplay the stakes here, and while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has called for US AI regulation in the past, he isn’t quite so keen these days—testifying in May that “it is very difficult to imagine us figuring out how to comply with 50 different sets of regulation.” Maybe his perspective changed when he needed ChatGPT to help raise his infant son.
The AI provision was a small part of the wide-ranging bill, which Republicans aim to pass by July 4 and Democrats hope to block. The AP has more info on the bill being updated live as we speak.
