Big Tech’s latest desperate push to regulate AI

For months, Big Tech lobbyists in Washington have chased the holy grail of pro-AI legislation: preemption. This would be a comprehensive federal law, passed in Congress and signed by the president, that would apply a single set of AI rules across the country and go beyond the messy state-by-state approach to regulation. For months, lobbyists have faced roadblocks and incurred political blowback nationwide, and now they face the prospect that after the midterms Congress will turn to hostile Democrats unwilling to work with them.

But their latest and most desperate attempt at preemption comes with new burdens, related to a very different battle in Congress that precedes ChatGPT’s public launch: children’s safety.

Earlier this week, reports leaked that The White House had told child safety groups And major tech companies said they would approve a list of child online safety laws with the support of Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), co-author of the report. Children’s Online Safety Act (KOSA)as part of the overall pre-emption package. While the issue of online safety overlaps significantly with AI, it is just one aspect of a much larger and complex set of issues that need to be addressed in a truly comprehensive law: borderline safety models, discrimination, environmental impact, etc.

Regardless, the potential deal faced one snag: The White House apparently did not inform House Republicans, who had just passed their own version of KOSA, that it would follow Blackburn’s legislation as a vehicle. Democrats who worked with Blackburn on the KOSA flavor in the Senate were allegedly left out of the loop as well. Furthermore, there has been a separate, bipartisan-supported bill on artificial intelligence, a preemptive bill, currently circulating in the House.

This has led to a week of utter confusion for supporters of either policy: AI preemptions and child safety may be lumped together in order to ensure preemptions are signed into law, but for whom Which version of child safety is being passed is unclear. Was KOSA the toughest law in the Senate? Was it the looser version supported by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA)? Where is the White House in all of this?

“No one really knows who’s driving this thing,” said one Republican lobbyist for a mid-sized technology company. Edge. “Everyone is deeply, deeply, deeply skeptical of the (bill) movement, because everyone is on different pages. I think the House is not going to move anything that Blackburn wants.”

Although the AI ​​regulatory battle has caused major rifts between the GOP leadership and its populist members, President Donald Trump himself He called for the passage of an artificial intelligence preemption billThis means that the Republican Party must achieve this one way or another. These days, White House policy experts are trying to perfect a preemptive approach influenced by Mike Davis, a Trump-allied lawyer and founder of the Article III Project, who led Successful attempt to kill different AI stop In the Senate last year.

In general, for pre-emption to be approved by Davis, the pre-emption law must meaningfully protect a set of values Davis called the “four elements”: Children, preservers, creators and communities. Some of these values ​​have been included in A draft proposal from the White House for a comprehensive law on artificial intelligencewhich was released in March of this year, and the KOSA listing fulfills the “children’s” requirement. But Davis said Edge He wants no legislation to address all four. “There’s not a chance in hell that a proactive AI strategy will succeed if it doesn’t address the four Cs. I will check that. Again.”

However, passage of COSA involves reconciling a significant difference between the House and Senate versions of the same bill. Senate version will Requiring technology companies to assume a ‘duty of care’ And take preventive measures to protect young users, which would extend this responsibility to include artificial intelligence companies as well. However, the House version, led by Scalise, relaxed that requirement late last November. Amidst the anger of child safety advocates. Thus, the House’s exclusion from White House discussions was notable to observers. “(Blackburn) doesn’t really want House KOSA,” noted Michael Toscano, a senior fellow and director of the Family First Technology Initiative at the conservative Institute for Family Studies.

Even if Trump succeeds in convincing House Republicans, they will face another problem: Democrats in Congress, who also learned of Blackburn’s negotiations with the White House at the same time as House Republicans. Although KOSA was co-sponsored by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and passed by a 91-3 vote in 2024, they were unaware that their legislation would now be constrained by the unpopular goal of getting ahead of AI. “If they (Blackburn and the White House) are looking at a standalone bill, it should go through the Senate,” one AI policy advocate said, noting that a new version of that bill would then require 60 votes — and therefore Democrats — to pass.

Even if the bill is popular, the timetable may not allow for it. “We’re in the middle of June. You have a month and a half before people leave for a (five-week) vacation. Then comes the (general) election season,” the AI ​​policy advocate said. “There is no way.” The remaining weeks of the legislative calendar have already been absorbed by more pressing matters: renewal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Actthe anti-immigration package, increased defense spending for Trump’s war with Iran, the cryptocurrency market structure bill, affordability measures, and the controversial Rescue America bill. Oh, and Regular budget items such as Medicaid.

Tying preemptions and COSA together presents Big Tech with a difficult choice: Do they want sweeping federal AI preemptions more than they want “duty of care” immunity? The Republican tech lobbyist noted they don’t have much time to make that choice, especially if Democrats take over one chamber. “After the election, what incentive do Democrats have to support anything? Like, why don’t they say, ‘Fuck you, we’ll do what we can in the new Congress?'” I’m highly skeptical.

Austin Carson, former head of government relations operations at Nvidia and founder of SeedAI, a nonprofit focused on increasing access to AI for local communities, was more skeptical of the success of KOSA’s preemptive marriage of convenience. “I can’t imagine a scenario in which (this bill) gets moved,” he said. Edge. “I can’t imagine it.”