US House lawmakers release draft bill to prohibit state AI rules

panny

Amendment 10 of the US Constitution: >The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Where in the Constitution does it delegate authority over AI to the federal government? Just curious.

jfengel

Fortunately, the administration's party believes that control belongs to the states and not in the hands of Washington bureaucrats.

gradientsrneat

> Trump in December said he would withhold federal broadband funding from states whose laws to regulate AI are judged by his administration to be holding back American dominance in the technology. Specifically, this is funding for BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access, And Deployment): https://www.ntia.gov/funding-programs/high-speed-internet-pr... Which among other things does "Deploying or upgrading internet infrastructure in unserved or underserved areas, or improving service to community anchor institutions". From the executive order in December, withholding of funds could include residential internet repairs and bandwidth upgrades, assuming that falls under "non-deployment": https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/12/fact-sheet-pr...

olivierestsage

Sure sign that we are not dealing with a coercive situation! :)

amazingamazing

Would people have the same reaction if it were solar tech, nuclear?

pasttense01

The best solution is to have uniform federal regulation with no state laws. The not as good solution is to have state regulation. Note this means companies will generally adopt policies nationally to meet the requirements of the big, restrictive states (California, etc) The worst solution is the House approach which will ban state regulation accompanied by the status quo of no federal regulation.

jwitthuhn

Good, Bernstein v. United States already established that software is speech. Limitations on what software one is allowed to produce are very blatant prior restraint.

jmyeet

I'm reminded of the 2010s fight over net neutrality. That clown Ajit Pai was brought in to kill it at the behest of the national ISPs. He's now the head of the CTIA. That's so weird. Anyway, Pai as FCC Commissioner argued the Federal government shouldn't be regulating net neutrality. California said "bet" and said if this wasn't a federal issue we'll do it instead. States rights, right? Wrong. The DoJ sued saying they can't do that [1]. At a certain point you have to realize "state's rights' is bullshit. The only thing this administration stands for is deregulation for extra profit of significant donors. We have the same thing where the Federal government is suing states over banning prediction markets (even though gambling is already banned by certain states). There are no principles here. It's all just kleptocracy. In this case, states absolutely have sovereignty regarding land use. This isn't a free speech issue. It's the same as zoning. This is like the Federal government saying "you can't ban casinos" or "you can't have high density housing". [1]: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-f...

BLKNSLVR

Small government for topics we don't care about, like education. Big government for agendas that we're pushing. (and when we say 'pushing' we mean 'planning to profit from').

tancop

if its really about development only and not preventing regulations on ai usage then its not a bad idea. but i dont see US politicians doing something like that. i really think the best way to handle this is federally protect open source code including ai (but also things like hack tools, anonymous crypto payments and breaking drm). that way states can regulate for profit companies as much as they want and it cant hurt free speech for individual people.