Despite Trump’s best efforts, US states will officially be able to regulate AI over the next ten years, with the US Senate voting to ditch that provision from the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
AI has been evolving at break-neck speed over the last few years, with companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google churning out model after model with little regulatory oversight. In order to compete with China, Trump wanted to further limit regulations in general to allow unfettered development moving forward.
Unfortunately for Trump, that won’t be the case, with the US Senate decisively shutting down the provision in a vote this week.
US Senate Shuts Down AI Regulation Ban
In a definitive 99-1 vote, the US Senate voted this week to get rid of the moratorium on AI regulation at the state level, which would have lasted ten years. That’s right, every single US senator across both parties voted in favor of the amendment, except for Thom Tillis (R-NC).
Some Republican senators had tried to save the provision through various concessions, including reducing the ban to only five years and allowing for some popular exceptions, like those regulations that protect children from AI-powered attacks.
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But alas, the vote to get rid of it entirely was far more popular, as is evident by the surprisingly bipartisan support.
A Response to Significant Backlash
The vote was a welcomed surprise to the many experts, economists, and advocacy groups that have been petitioning elected officials about the risks of this AI regulation ban since its announcement.
“The proposed ban that has now been removed would have stopped states from protecting their residents while offering nothing in return at the federal level. In the end, 99 senators voted to strip the language out when just hours earlier it looked like the moratorium might have survived.” – Jim Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense Media in a statement.
Simply put, federal regulations have not been put in place to properly rein in AI, which means that states have largely been the only defense against some of the potential risks of AI technology.
The Risks of Unfettered AI Development
Companies like Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft had put their support behind this ban, even though the chief scientist at Microsoft noted that this kind of regulation moratorium would “hold them back” in the long run.
If you can believe it, holding back AI companies isn’t the only risk of unfettered AI development. From convincing deepfakes to AI-powered cyber attacks, the risks of AI currently outweigh the potential benefits, and it’s not particularly close.
Even the Godfather of AI said at the start of the year that there is a 10% to 20% chance that the technology will lead to an extinction level event for humans. All that to say, the more regulation the better.
