Lawmakers are proposing hundreds of measures to micromanage and control this emergent technology. A complicated regulatory framework could devastate America’s technology businesses and global competitiveness.
Congressional gridlock and fears of rapid technological advancement in artificial intelligence have uncorked an explosion of counterproductive state AI laws and proposed legislation across the country.
Sadly, America’s vaunted laboratories of democracy are mostly brainstorming different ideas to micromanage and control the development of unique and competing artificial intelligence models, with potentially devastating consequences for America’s technology businesses and global competitiveness.
Imagine if burdensome rules and regulations had stopped the United States from besting the Soviets in the space race after the Sputnik launch. Today, we risk that doomsday scenario in the race to technological preeminence against China.
In 2023, lawmakers in at least 31 states introduced more than 190 AI-related proposals, according to data from the Software Alliance, an industry trade group. That represented a 440 percent increase over the number introduced in 2022. Only a handful of those bills were enacted, but that hasn’t discouraged prospective AI regulators: Today, state legislatures and the District of Columbia are considering nearly 650 pieces of AI-related legislation, many of which define AI differently.
How AI startups and small businesses, often strapped for cash and resources, are supposed to comply with such a potentially complicated regulatory framework remains a mystery. But what is clear is that this is no way to usher in the next technological revolution, nor is it even certain that this revolution will happen under American leadership if the United States does not play its cards right.
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Logan Kolas is the director of technology policy at the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization that promotes consumer-focused free-market solutions to state and federal policy challenges.