“This is absurd.”

That’s all Amba Kak, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, recalls thinking when she first heard about the proposed moratorium on state AI regulation tucked into President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” – the same funding bill that had Trump and Elon Musk recently trading barbs online. According to the bill’s text, no state “may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems” for a 10-year period, which would start the same day the bill is passed.

The moratorium was worse than doing nothing at all to regulate AI, she remembers thinking. Not only was the proposed rule stopping such regulation in the future, but it was also “rolling back the very few protections we have.” It could scuttle bills covering anything from data privacy to facial recognition models in Washington, Colorado, and other states.

“It’s turning the clock back, and it’s freezing it there,” Kak says. Days after she learned about the moratorium, she was called to testify about it at the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

The AI moratorium passed without issue as part of the House bil …

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