Congress might block state AI laws for a decade | Hacker News Reader

Congress might block state AI laws for a decade

techcrunch.com

23 pointswslh21 comments

The "AI" czar has been funding telehealth companies and is now probably complicit in the largest takeaway of states' rights ever:

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/executives-from-adhd-startup...

https://sfstandard.com/2024/06/13/telemedicine-adderall-vyva...

He seems to have a history of investing in companies that get into trouble:

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/13/ceo-david-sacks-on-moving-...

It is quite ironic that Republicans have been complaining about the erosion of states' rights forever. I suppose that now a telehealth investor decides the future of "AI" safety and copyright laundering.

Yeah, don't complicate it, it's just corruption.

They do not care about all state's rights, only certain ones. You know the ones.

The AI czar is symbolic of the terrible year it's been for American capitalism. Fealty, corruption, regulatory capture. Extracting value from the less powerful instead of creating it.

It was an excellent year for American Capitalism. Get outa here with that "capitalism fights for the little guy" rubbish. We all love a good disruption story, we all love to personally win the game, but on a systems level it is crystal clear that on net the incentives overwhelmingly point in the opposite direction.

The objective function of capitalism is weighted by wealth. "Capitalism is about doing what other people want" is the wealth_gini=0 limit. "Capitalism is about doing what rich people want" is the wealth_gini=1 limit. The USA has a wealth_gini of about 0.85. What do rich people want that poor people don't? Stuff their pockets by extracting value from the poors, of course, which is exactly what we see here. Canceling redistributive programs and taxes is about letting the market do more of what it wants to do: serve the rich, screw the poor.

Would you consider it to be a good year when it leaves millions believing capitalism does not better their lives? We are agreeing.

You see, it's a small government move in this case because only states they don't like are bothering to attempt AI regulations.

Wouldn't the interstate commerce clause automatically override any state level regulations on AI, except in cases where a company and its customers are all in-state?

Not too familiar with the law, but Southwest Airlines only operated within Texas, and existed without federal regulation for some time, but eventually the federal government regulated them too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_Deregulation_Act

Texas already did this at the municipal level[0]. Government power continues to be centralized whether it is Republicans or Democrats. Republicans seem to be the only ones marketing themselves as the party of small government though, which is a complete misnomer.

[0]: https://www.dlapiper.com/en/insights/publications/2025/06/te...

This makes sense from a national security perspective. China is a unified AI strategy, and America can either lead or fall behind, in which case we will all be using Chinese models that bend reality towards CCP's preferred idealogy (look into Deepseek censorship to see how this will work). If AI companies have to navigate 50 different AI regulatory regimes it will bog down progress.

I know my opinions are often unpopular here on HN. It's unfortunate that so many people resort to flagging them based on disagreements.

I don't buy that. You can block Chinese companies. Human influencers are more effective than "AI" slop, etc.

And again (you didn't make that argument, just for completeness' sake): Military applications aren't affected anyway. They can train on whatever they want as long as the products stay in the military and do not compete with writers and artists etc.

I actually tend to agree with this sentiment, but the fate of the Tiktok ban should probably be instructive here. America (at least the current government) is not really interested in world or technological leadership anymore.

> in which case we will all be using Chinese models that bend reality towards CCP's preferred idealogy

quite how this is worse than what zuckerberg or elon want I really don't know

What a tough nut to crack because almost every issue can be reduced to national security. What scissor do you use when deciding whether the national security perspective justifies other consequences like loss of freedom?

AI companies already need to navigate multiple regulatory regimes. Chinese companies are not exempt.

If a few states adopt more stringent rules, US-based companies will likely have an easier time meeting them than foreign companies. Don't you think Facebook and Google helped shape the CCPA to make compliance easier for them, perhaps to the detriment of foreign competition?

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44406186

If this was left at the state level some elected official would say the devil is in the code and we need to ban it.

Which state official has said "the devil is in the code and we need to ban it", can you name them?

If Republicans were actually for states rights like they say when it comes to abortions then they should put their money where their mouths are and let states decide for themselves on AI.

Are yall in the comments agreeing with this actually astroturfing? I can smell the hypocrisy.

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