#ai-regulation

#ai-regulation

Moving forward, California will require any companion bot platforms-including ChatGPT, Grok, Character.AI, and the like-to create and make public "protocols to identify and address users' suicidal ideation or expressions of self-harm." They must also share "statistics regarding how often they provided users with crisis center prevention notifications to the Department of Public Health," the governor's office said. Those stats will also be posted on the platforms' websites, potentially helping lawmakers and parents track any disturbing trends.

A union between human and machine? Not on this Ohio Republican's watch. A bill introduced last month by Buckeye state representative Thaddeus Claggett, from Licking County, would block AI systems from having legal personhood by declaring them to be "nonsentient entities," NBC4 News reports. It would also mean that AIs wouldn't be able to marry a human or another AI.

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This week in Other Barks & Bites: USPTO Acting Commissioner for Patents Valencia Martin Wallace sends an internal email to staff indicating that 1% of the agency's workforce will be laid off; U.S. sales of electric vehicles hit a record during the third quarter of 2025 just as federal subsidies for EV purchases ended; the Federal Circuit nixes US Inventor's pursuit of associational standing to sue the USPTO for denying its petition for rulemaking on discretionary denial criteria for AIA trials;

The SANDBOX Act, if passed by Congress, would allow companies to apply for modifications to or waivers from any "obstructive regulations" to the testing and deployment of products or services that use or contain "in whole or in part" at least one AI system. In return, companies would be required to disclose plans to mitigate consumer safety and financial risks.

On the right, at the Westin DC Downtown: NatCon, a gathering of Trump officials and allies calling for the persecution of AI developers and the expulsion of the "insufficiently American." On the left, at the Salamander Hotel on the waterfront: the Abundance Conference, whose annoyingly optimistic proponents envision an American techno-utopia, which could be realized if governments just stopped regulating so damn much.

Hawley said he planned to introduce a bill on the topic "soon," but declined to offer further details. A self-styled populist, Hawley staked out his stance against autonomous vehicles in a speech at the National Conservatism last week, where he cast AI as part of a transhumanist project and called for a series of restrictions on the technology. "Only humans should drive cars and trucks," Hawley said at the time.

Plenty of lousy votes were taken during the summer's Congressional sessions, when President Trump's omnibus "Big Beautiful Bill" eventually passed after numerous senators and House members obtained their various pounds of flesh from it. Trump gave concessions to senators from Alaska, Wyoming and many other states to win continued tax cuts for billionaires plus massive slashes in Medicaid and funds for rural hospitals.

The TUC's Building a pro-worker AI innovation strategy paper warns that short-term priorities driven by the UK's corporate governance system mean AI may be used by some employers to cut costs and automate existing processes, rather than invest, expand and innovate. "Such decisions will more likely displace or deskill workers rather than augment, expand or retrain the workforce as part of technological upgrading," said the TUC.

While the lack of federal regulation in the U.S. presents a loose framework for AI, it contrasts with Europe’s stricter data and privacy laws, increasing calls for transparency and safety.

Elon Musk's Optimus demo at Tesla's We Robot event made one thing clear: when it comes to humanoids, the spotlight still belongs to the United States.

Europe is heading down the wrong path on AI. This code introduces a number of legal uncertainties for model developers, as well as measures which go far beyond the scope of the AI Act.

Henna Virkkunen, the EU Commission's Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, argued that the AI Liability Directive would have led to fragmented rules across EU member states.

In many ways, it's too early to tell where the AI wave will take us - we've only seen a fraction of its capabilities so far, which is equal parts exciting and terrifying.

Trump's executive order requires any AI company hoping to contract with the federal government to prove their AI systems are 'truth-seeking' based on historical accuracy.

Even when the legislation emerges, a major concern is that the government is committed to a domain-specific approach to the regulation of AI.

The AI Infrastructure directive addresses energy and permitting issues associated with data centers and the computational demands of running AI applications, requiring the Department of Energy to issue RFPs.

Every product leader used to brag about how quickly they could ship their product. However, with the rise of new regulations, today's top PMs brag about their ability to ship fast while also showing their work, dataset lineage, bias tests, and audit hooks before any code reaches production.

This compromise is terrible. It's actually worse than the original.