#ai-regulation

#ai-regulation

"Regulation is going to have to be self-regulation," said Sir Martin Sorrell, founder and executive chairman of S4 Capital, this week at the Fortune Global Forum in Riyadh. "The cat is out of the bag. We've missed the Oppenheimer moment. Many people compare it to the control of nuclear weapons."

We call for a prohibition on the development of superintelligence, not lifted before there is broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably, and strong public buy-in.

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 Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act, or S.B. 53, requires the most advanced A.I. companies to report safety protocols used in building their technologies and forces the companies to report the greatest risks posed by their technologies. The bill also strengthens whistle-blower protections for employees who warn the public about potential dangers the technology poses. State Senator Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco, who proposed the legislation, said the law was crucial to fill a vacuum to protect consumers from potential harms from A.I.

We have to start to open up the gates and allow our companies to innovate much, much faster.

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.