As states take on AI, tech’s top lobbyist fights back
While Congress is talking a lot about artificial intelligence but doing little to regulate it, state legislatures are moving quickly ahead, presenting a possible future where companies and users have to contend with 50 different AI rules.
One of the industry groups at the forefront of lobbying states, along with Washington, is TechNet, whose members include a mix of startups, venture capitalists, and big tech companies like OpenAI, Sequoia, and Apple.
TechNet CEO Linda Moore, who was in Silicon Valley last week, noted the dialogue in DC is focused on averting risk and looking back at the past for missed opportunities or mistakes to apply to its approach on AI. Meanwhile, the tech sector on the West Coast is thinking about the future.
In this edited conversation, we talked to her about the more than 400 AI bills proposed across the 50 states and whether the industry thinks any of them make sense.
A: More difficult. DC moves rather slowly, but even that is a lot to handle right now. At the state level, we have not only the best 50-state program in the tech industry, it’s the only one in the tech industry.
