AI safety advocacy group launches new state-level effort
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Americans for Responsible Innovation debuted the advocacy arm to bring responsible AI policy assistance to local lawmakers.
Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Americans for Responsible Innovation announced a new state-level advocacy policy initiative Thursday to push for responsible AI guardrails.
In an announcement first shared with Nextgov/FCW, ARI said it is bringing on new staff to support the state-level AI policy advocacy branch, which will work to address frontier AI risks and threats to workers and families across all 50 states and prioritize the public interest when interfacing with lawmakers as more tech industry regulatory proposals develop.
“To succeed in passing the guardrails necessary to sustain AI innovation while protecting the public interest, the state arena can no longer be treated as a secondary front," said ARI President Brad Carson in a press release. “Industry actors understand this, which is why they are investing heavily and moving fast.”
ARI’s new state policy platform will begin by identifying emerging bills across the nation and offering policy expertise to state lawmakers while pushing the group’s core philosophy: codifying responsible AI guardrails at a legislative level.
“A proactive state operation can help responsible legislators get ahead of industry campaigns, produce durable and constitutionally sound law, and demonstrate that the responsible AI community is a serious player in every arena where the future of AI governance is being decided,” Carson said.
ARI’s state expansion comes as federal regulators continue to mull over potential avenues to achieve federal preemption of state and local artificial intelligence laws. Notably, Reps. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., and Lori Trahan, D-Mass., introduced their FRONTIER Act in July that carves out select lanes where states cannot regulate, including imposing “substantive obligations” on AI model developers related to model catastrophic risk-transparency, third-party auditing and incident reporting.
A discussion draft of the bill initially included a three-year preemption on states, which selectively targeted the lanes related to the deployment and use of AI.
The draft version of the preemption was criticized as too broad and was narrowed in scope in the FRONTIER Act to cover catastrophic risk reporting and independent third-party safety verification. It also gave the federal government the ability to have jurisdiction over pausing AI development as needed.
Editor's note: This article has been updated to clarify the details of the FRONTIER Act.