A Republican budget reconciliation bill currently being debated in Congress contains language that could limit states’ ability to regulate artificial intelligence. The original House version included a provision that would have prohibited states from implementing AI regulations for 10 years. This sparked opposition from a bipartisan group of hundreds of state lawmakers, including three from Wisconsin, who signed a letter to Congress expressing their concerns.
The Senate version has since been amended to penalize states that regulate AI by cutting funding for broadband projects over the next decade. Democratic state Sen. Kelda Roys of Madison, one of the signatories, described this as “functionally a ban,” as it conditions broadband funding on accepting unregulated AI.
“The idea is like, if you want your citizens to be connected to the modern world via broadband, then you have to accept totally unregulated AI. That’s not acceptable,” Roys said in an interview with WPR’s ‘Wisconsin Today’.
While Roys remains concerned, she is hopeful that state lawmakers can agree on future AI regulations if Congress doesn’t limit their ability to do so. “This is an area that is new enough that it hasn’t yet settled into sort of predictable partisan patterns,” she noted.
AI experts share Roys’ concerns. Annette Zimmermann, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and political philosopher of AI, expressed worry about the trend toward deregulation in AI policy. She highlighted three primary concerns about artificial intelligence: data privacy, misinformation, and discrimination.
Zimmermann pointed out that other countries, such as those in the European Union, have implemented broader protections for consumer data, while the U.S. lacks meaningful federal regulations in this area. She also noted that large language models can present factually incorrect information in an authoritative voice and perpetuate bias if their training data is biased.
One argument in favor of limiting state regulations is to prevent a patchwork approach that could create challenges for AI developers working across state borders. However, both Roys and Zimmermann believe that some regulation is better than none. “The idea that they can’t have adequate compliance with our laws, I think, is laughable,” Roys said.
The U.S. Senate continues to work on its version of the budget reconciliation bill, aiming to pass it before recessing on July 4. Any amended version would need to be approved by the House before being signed into law.
