ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - Buried hundreds of pages inside President Trump’s so-called Big, Beautiful budget reconciliation bill is a provision that’s worrying state legislatures around the country. And here in Georgia.
It would ban state lawmakers from making any laws around rapidly-growing artificial intelligence software for ten years, instead leaving that task up to federal lawmakers for the next decade.
The provision was proposed by Energy and Commerce Committee – slid into a bill well over a thousand pages that has been passed by the U.S. House and is awaiting a final U.S. Senate vote.
It was so subtle, even some U.S. lawmakers and their staff, who often help pour over large pieces of legislation, missed it.
Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor-Greene posted online that she wouldn’t have voted for the bill at all had she seen it.
“I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there,” her post said. “We have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years and giving it free rein and tying states hands is potentially dangerous.”
Many Georgia state lawmakers agreed.
This past legislative session, the General Assembly passed a package of AI-regulating bills that aimed to cut back on fake AI-generated election content, and AI-generated pornography.
Those who championed the measure worry the laws may disappear, since federal law often supersedes state law.
“In Washington, they’ve done nothing, and we must act to protect our citizens and businesses and prepare for the future,” said State Sen. John Albers, R – Roswell, who helped pass the AI bills this year and chaired a special Senate committee studying the impacts of the software.
“These are the same people in Washington that cannot balance a budget, so my confidence is very low that they’ll tackle something as complex as artificial intelligence,” Albers added.
AI development has moved at a breakneck pace in the past few years and its applications have become more accessible to the general public.
Experts watching closely, like Professor Ram Chelleppa who teaches information systems at Emory University, say there’s absolutely a need to regulation.
“I do think we do need some guardrails and I’m not quite sure who is the right party at this time or who understands this enough,” he said. “As these technologies evolve, we may see things that we didn’t quite anticipate, and we can’t really regulate for something that you haven’t seen.”
There is some precedent, Chellappa said. As the internet and the omnipresence of search engines like Google came to prominence, lawmakers set in place guardrails around security. He expects there may be similar considerations when it comes to artificial intelligence.
Chellappa says things like data privacy, copyright laws, interstate commerce and fake AI-generated content are all things that should cross the minds of lawmakers attempting to regulate the emerging technology.
“There could be principles around which we can kind of think about, he said. “For example, if content is developed, should it be declared that such content is AI generated or not?”
He and other experts in the field of AI would like to see a combination of state and federal regulatory efforts – and even international cooperation if other countries are willing to.
“We are moving at a pace that we quite haven’t seen before,” said Chellappa. “I don’t think it’s good for the country or the public to have the states and the federal government in conflict in this situation. I think we need to see them operate together.”
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