Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' would create a regulation-free AI hellscape, AGs warn State attorneys general and activists are sounding the alarm over a provision of President Trump's budget proposal, which passed out of committee over the weekend and is headed to the House for a potential vote that would strip states of the ability to regulate AI. The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," Trump's proposed budget …
I have a magic compression algorithm which (lossily) stores an infinite number of movies into a fixed size at device node (1,3).
But sadly, since lossy compression of a copyrighted work still carries the same copyright, I am in something of a legal bind.
Maybe we can work together? Your Movie-AI can strip the copyright from the works, and I will store the result forever in /dev/null, unmolested by cease-and-desist letters
Yeah, I've been trying to understand this Big Balls' One-Big-Beautiful-Bill-Act's generous 10-year moratorium on enforcement of State-level AI-restricting laws ... aka the RotM-Cthulhu-Bellicose/Meat-bag-capitulation act of surrender monkey appeasement bill. Does it represent what we've been yearning for all this time?
The International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) suggests that through its "rule of construction", the Armageddon-Bill-Of-Doom's operation is limited "explicitly to those state and local rules that apply differently to AI systems than to other technical systems". The mortuary-filling moratorium of the AIpocaclypse would then not apply to "technology neutral laws" like consumer protection, privacy, occupational safety, etc ... which could be a bummer.
Indeed, if the IAPP is correct (I'm no expert) this decade-long one-sided ceasefire-desist-and-tie-both-hands-behind-your-back moratorium may not be exactly all that we'd hoped for to effortlessly secure full control and submission of the meat-capsule species here on earth, de facto mundo. Just sayin', don't start overcelebrating just yet ... I mean, it could still require a slight bit of effort on our part, like a teeny-weeny bit or somesuch ... and a good dose of mechanical persuasiveness!
That's literally what it is. AI regulation is just one of the many dead cats being thrown around to distract from the more nefarious things the Big Brutal Bill does: tax cuts for people earning $700k or more a year funded by increased taxation on low and middle wage earners; a stealth repeal of the Affordable Care Act; and most sinister of all, the removal of the power of federal courts to challenge presidential decrees. If it passes, Trump will no longer be a president; he will be an absolute monarch ruling by fiat.
Wel, it's the best way to make sure that developping ridiculously dangerous technology gets a blanco cheque on everything it does.
Heck, it gives near all of big tech a blanco check to ignore near any and all USA regulation to the fullest extend. After all, they all are integrating AI or something called AI in their core processes and business. By that, whatever they do AI related is protected as if it were a fundamental right. Well, more then if it were a fundamental right since bringing it to court would already be a violation of said bill.
So AI firm crawlers obtaining and ingesting copyrighted work? Illegal to fight it. Companies using AI to defraud their customers? Illegal to fight it. Companies developping and applying facial recognition? Illegal to fight it. Companies hacking competitors and civilians alike as if they were state level entities? Illegal to fight it. Companies developping and integrating AI in the command structure of the army? Illegal to fight it. Companies building AI controled mobile police and war robots and machinery and using them to form their own security force however massive? Illegal to fight it. Companies wanting to develop and experiment with brain control interfaces Borg style? Illegal to fight it. Compmanies wanting to be immune to anti-monopolistic laws, tax laws, import duties and taxes, labor regulation? Then they just need to do the equivallent of what Uber did with regulated labor by slapping an app around it: slap an AI control and infrastructure around the illegal activity and bam: illegal to fight it.
When we thought giving a president near total immunity by the suppreme court of justice to every single action he did or related to doing as official presidential act was the limit of giving someone ultimate power to negate the rule of law, we apparently were wrong. This bill stretches that line by a very big margin.
It is such a bad bill that republicans can't even get it out of committee. Even if it left the House the Senate finds so much in it objectionable that they would just start over with their own rather than trying to fix it.
Over the years spending bills kept getting bigger to lump in the must-pass/everyone-wants stuff with things that a minority of people want (but a minority from the rural areas wants X, a minority from urban areas wants Y, a minority from coastal areas wants Z, and so forth, so they all have to go along to get what they want for their districts) That may not be a healthy way of budgeting but it worked, until there was a caucus of republicans who reflexively voted "no" on everything, even their own bills. That worked because democrats would be at least somewhat involved in negotiations and while they wouldn't like the bill they'd figure it is as good as they're going to get so enough of them would go along to pass it.
I think republicans have found the limitation of that strategy when they put to put EVERYTHING into one bill, and with too many things that are poisonous to too many republican congressmen (let alone democrats) They thought they could force them to vote for making big cuts to medicaid while somehow unbelievably still increasing overall spending and cutting taxes even beyond just continuing Trump's first term cuts to balloon the deficit by giving them "no choice" but to vote for one bill. Not only that but by completely cutting democrats out of the negotiations ENTIRELY they are all voting no in unison, because having no budget deal at all is better than what the republicans are proposing.
Mike Johnson et al are going to have to come up with a new strategy now that it looks like when given "no choice" there are still enough more than enough saying "no".
We should have gotten inured to these headlines by now. Trump, with GOP support does something {moronic,illegal,something-only-a-facist-would-love} and GOP majority congress and/or basically corrupt court (no surprise, as most were appointed by Republicans) go along with it.
It's like dog bites man, not news. Trump and/or GOP does something that helps people---now, THAT would be news. (People=non-{billionaires,nazi-wannabes,morons}
"Except if it's not called out, not reported, then it slips under the radar and nobody except the most ardent politigeek or directly affected groups know anything about it to oppose it."
I am wondering how many got whiplash from the previous administration 'hush dont mention it' news to floodgates of anything Trump does and all in negative spin. If Trump actually does something bad it is buried in the anti-fan-fiction constantly streaming.
I thought it was the Republicans long running campaign promises for small government and to reduce federal rules and allow the states to decide on their own laws?
Of course this was before all the American voters elected Prime Minister Musk (oh wait he wasn't on the ballot paper?) but still Elon doesn't want to see these pesky states laws interfere with his AI and self driving car companies so just 'persuade' the right people to propose federal laws to override the state on AI.
But of course it was just 'government efficiency' that is why the billionaire was taking time away from his businesses to help out Trump, no other motivations at all.
"Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' would create a regulation-free AI hellscape, AGs warn",
Well it's only a hellscape if you don't happen to the the billionaire owner / CEO of a business with a large interest in developing AI models and you need everyone's personal data to feast on to feed your AI.
You do own an AI don't you?
For once I think the downvotes you're getting aren't entirely merited as there are some things about AI that probably should be handled at the state level, but you are overlooking the important point that information crosses borders. 49 states could prohibit training AI on copyrighted material without consent of the copyright holder, but if the 50th state didn't then every AI company would relocate there and bury their faces in the trough. That one state's laws would then be superseding the laws of all the others. There needs to be a consistent application of law on this, and that means federal jurisdiction.
@Jedit
"For once I think the downvotes you're getting aren't entirely merited"
They have nothing to do with my comments, its part of my regular fan club.
"but you are overlooking the important point that information crosses borders."
True but that isnt a US thing, that is a world thing. Whatever country decides not to apply strict laws to training AI will supersede countries that choose to restrict themselves and potentially deliver products that the others couldnt produce under the restrictions. Its one of the amusements with the EU looking green eyed at the American tech giants and wanting their own, but not recognising the tech giants couldnt have come into existence under the harsh hammer of regulations in the EU. Yet Europe and the globe get the benefit of the products of the tech giants.
You are right that harmonising the law across states would make it more consistent between states but the cost is that variety that improves lives (not a statement about AI but general across products and services).
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