This newsletter first started picking up readers because of my writing about AI regulations in state governments. I have a background in state and local policy, having spent the plurality of my career working at think tanks that specialized in such issues. In 2024, I was one of the early people to raise concerns about what I perceived to be a torrent of state-based AI laws, including, most notably, California’s now-failed SB 1047.
The torrent of state bills has only grown since then, with more than 1,000 having been introduced this year. Most of the lawmakers who draft such statutes are not acting with malice; instead, they feel motivated by an urge “to do something about AI.”
This may not feel like a great reason to pass “a law about AI,” (generally, laws should solve specific problems, not scratch the itches of random state legislators), but states are sovereign entities. In the absence of a federal legislative framework that preempts this sovereign power, this torrent will continue
