AI versus Marshy - US: Passing a 10-year ban on AI regulation by the States

I’m going to dive into a specific topic from my recent newsletter - the US passing a 10-year ban on AI regulation by the states. This caught my attention, and I’d like to share some of the interesting commentary around it. If you’re new here, feel free to jump in, and I’ll try to bring you up to speed. A large budget reconciliation bill is moving through congress that includes a small clause baning state regulation of AI. I won’t pretend to understand the bits and nuances of this, but the (limited) commentary around is what’s interesting to me. Some excerpts from /r/ArtificialIntelligence : ​ Capable-Deer744 ​ I feel like something extremely fishy is cooking rn At a time when AI is the biggest thing, a 1000 page bill has one paragraph about AI?! Thats kinda insane man – ​ 5553331117 ​ And all the towns suffering the environmental impacts of these AI data centers will get to the point of being unlivable. What great thing we have going fellas. – ​ Unusual-Estimate8791 ​ yeah it’s weird how something that major just slips in like that. one paragraph on ai in a huge bill feels off, especially when ai is moving faster than most can keep up with There’s a bigger discussion of the bill in TechPolicy.press which shares details about the bill originating from a conservative think tank called R Street Institute, and this pearler of a quote from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman re: less regulation at a committee hearing: “I’m not sure what a 10-year learning period means, but I think having one federal approach focused on light touch and even playing field sounds great to me.” Another area discussions cropped up was in the subreddit /r/biglaw : Is anyone on this thread concerned about the no regulation on AI for ten years in the bill passed? If passed, states could no longer enforce unauthorized practice of law which was the strongest moat we had. How is this not terrifying people? Do people just not know because it is snuck in with so much other stuff? There’s not much concern in there, but I’m wondering if quotes like the below age well: ​ taxinomics ​ The strongest moat we have is being educated, trained, and experienced. Over the centuries, technology has always promised to level the playing field between professionals and non-professionals but in the end it has only ever amplified the capability gap. Artificial intelligence is no different than any other technology ever invented. ​ llcampbell616 ​ The strongest moat we have is that all of the LLM models still, to put it as kindly as possible, suck. They are not even close to replacing lawyers and it hasn’t gotten appreciably better since the first models saw wide release 2.5 years ago. I wouldn’t worry. The fact that moments like this barely rank a murmur in what I can find is the other interesting part to this. Originally appeared in newsletter : AI versus Marshy 60 - comeback edition