The House reconciliation bill would block states and localities from enforcing new regulations on artificial intelligence for the next 10 years. But as the bill heads over to the Senate, the provision is on shaky ground.
Sen. Josh Hawley, who’s been a prominent voice against anticompetitive practices in Big Tech, told NOTUS the provision would only make it to President Donald Trump’s desk over his “firm opposition.”
“I’ll try to do everything I can to kill that,” Hawley said. “It’s really terrible policy. I thought we were the party of individual rights,” Hawley said.
“Is it not the right of the individual to protect his personally identifiable information? Is it not the right of an individual artist to protect their art, songs or writing?” Hawley said. “We’re talking about preventing states from protecting these folks. We ought to be giving individuals more rights in the age of AI, not taking it away,”
That’s not to say the AI provision is dead on arrival in the Senate. Some Republican senators said they support the idea that a patchwork of policies on AI would be a problem. But the Senate is another chance for Democrats, policy analysts and Big Tech oversight advocates to push back on a provision they say could allow AI companies to expand without adequate oversight.
Opponents of the moratorium say it is the right of states like California — where most advanced AI labs are located — to address Congress’ inaction and set up AI guardrails.
“I’ve always believed that states need the laboratories of democracy,” Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado told NOTUS, adding that he was “not inclined” to support the legislation. “I’d love to see the states do some regulations, and then let’s see how they work on the federal level.”
State legislatures in Colorado and California have moved quickly in the past two years to try to establish regulations on the development and implementation of AI models, though these efforts have not yet been successful and major AI companies have put lobbying resources into stopping states from regulating AI.
Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla of California told NOTUS they have not had time to review the legislation and they would withhold their judgment on it until they do so.
“The states are the only ones attempting to tackle this problem and actually working together in bipartisan way in their state legislatures,” Jody Calemine, director of advocacy at the AFL-CIO, told NOTUS this week as the bill was working its way through the House.
Calemine says AI is already disrupting the transportation, logistics and entertainment industries. He characterized the moratorium as a “a big favor to Big Tech that just leaves workers and everybody else, frankly, unprotected for 10 years.”
The provision could hit another roadblock in the Senate: the Byrd rule, which generally forbids Senators from including non-budgetary legislation in their budget reconciliation bill.
California Rep. Jay Obernolte, one of the main proponents of the provision in the House bill, said he’s confident the bill’s language is tailored to facilitate the eventual enforcement of a national standard of AI regulation and that it was specifically written to work within the confines of the Senate’s Byrd rule.
“We crafted the language specifically to be Byrd compatible, so I think it has a good chance,” Obernolte told NOTUS last week.
Though none of the senators NOTUS spoke with said they had time to closely review the provision in the House reconciliation bill, almost all of them expressed skepticism that the measure would be able to survive the Senate parliamentarian’s scrutiny.
“It’s sound policy, I agree with the policy objective,” Sen. Ted Cruz told NOTUS. “There may be challenges getting past the Byrd rule, so it may have difficulty staying in a reconciliation bill,” he said.
Cruz said that if the provision needs to be stripped out of the Senate reconciliation bill, he is planning to file another regulatory bill with similar language. “I hope we get it done. I don’t know whether it’ll be done on reconciliation or a different vehicle,” he added.
Most Republican senators were receptive to the policy goals of the provision, even if they hadn’t had time to review the language in the House bill.
“I support the concept,” Sen. Mike Rounds told NOTUS. “This is interstate commerce and if we start doing this hodgepodge from one state to the next we’re going to cause some real problems. And we’re going to slow down the development of AI, which will give our adversaries a leg up.”
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Samuel Larreal is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. NOTUS reporter Evan McMorris-Santoro contributed reporting.