Montana passes Right to Compute act (2025)
westernmt.news
westernmt.news
The absence of such a story makes me think this law doesn't protect shit. What exactly did a Montanian get killed or arrested trying to do with a computer that is now protected? Can I use AI during a traffic stop or use AI to surveil and doxx governemnt employees? What exactly is the government giving up by granting me this right?
Or is this just about supressing opposition to data centers?
> Nationally, the Right to Compute movement is gaining traction. Spearheaded by the grassroots group RightToCompute.ai, the campaign argues that computation — like speech and property — is a fundamental human right. “A computer is an extension of the human capacity to think,” the organization states.
It's still way better than Upton Sinclair's time. But it would be nice if the FDA and USDA were run by people who eat rather than sell food.
And none of it prevents bad food handling practices by minimum wage staff.
Your argument is that all restaurants in your area handle food unsafely? Or that some do flagrantly and without penalty? Or that one has once and you got sick and so all the regulations are worthless as a result?
Trying to understand what argument you think you’re making, here, and specifically how factually bereft and vacuous it actually is.
You need to pay various levels of governments, engineers and architects 10's of thousands just to make blueprints and have them stamped by 2 levels of governments before a construction permit is even given in the name of "food safety".
Then you need to build the thing, pay more fees to get it actually certified. Then maybe you can think about hiring and training employees, a million or so dollars later.
The equivalent is a tech startup needing to pay government and some regulatory organization $50k just to be allowed to buy a laptop to then maybe think about writing code in the future.
Yes, paying government fees before there's a single employee doesn't magically imbue the employees (that don't exist yet) with the knowledge of safe food handling...
Do you think cold storage requirements, sinks, and other functional items in the kitchen don't prevent poor food handling practices?
> a million or so dollars later.
Eye roll.
> The equivalent is a tech startup needing to pay government and some regulatory organization $50k just to be allowed to buy a laptop to then maybe think about writing code in the future.
Your shitty react SPA likely won't kill anyone because you didn't bother installing any sinks and didn't think your refrigerator needed to appropriately keep raw chicken at the right temperature. But if it could, maybe they should. Maybe there would be less Meta engineers and we'd all be better off.
> Yes, paying government fees before there's a single employee doesn't magically imbue the employees (that don't exist yet) with the knowledge of safe food handling...
And yet it provides them with the appropriate tools to keep that food safe after.
> Maybe try reading or understanding.
Ironic lead in, when you don't actually know what regulations you're even whining about or why they might exist.
They make it easier to have safe food handling practices but they don't prevent poor ones either. Otherwise we'd have eliminated food poisoning from restaurants and institutions. Canada sees 14 million food poisoning cases per year (out of a population of 40 million) and many of those are from restaurants and institutions.
There's also many, many jurisdictions with less regulation. Most of the US, everywhere I've seen in the EU, most of Asia from what I've seen. Dunno how much you've eaten in Canada but our food scene is on average, pretty shit.
They do because these fees are paid to engineers and architects as well as to the local health authority to certify that the restaurant is up to local "health codes", keeping in mind this is pre-lease and pre-construction. They regulate the size of pipes, the potential ventilation, amount of washrooms, amount of sinks, etc... in the name of food safety.
Now that's fine but why do governments get tens of thousands of those fees? There's also no nuance for small-scale operators. And if you buy a defunct restaurant that's already paid those fees, you get to pay them again. Again, these are to comply with "health regulations" and are things that no non-food business needs to pay.
computation — like speech and property — is a fundamental human right
I don't necessarily disagree with the idea, but until profit is shared with taxpayers, this is a one-way transaction of taxpayers bankrolling AI companies.
As far as monopolies go I don't think it's our biggest concern, like you say.
If we want to continue to wage wars and seek conquest, it's not great to have it located in one/few countries. But instead if we want to work towards peace, we should continue breaking down barriers to trade (while maintaining protections for labor).
You don't think there's reasons pass laws banning AI...datacenters?
Because what state is banning the concept of AI? They're banning/restricting the creation of a type of infrastructure within their borders because they feel that is detrimental to their citizens. Maybe it's NIMBY/Luditte BS to you, but people not wanting their resources to go help ensure some dork can have a chat-bot girlfriend seems normal to me.
>>>>absence of a correspondingly negative motivating event.
What did you mean? Why do you believe there has not been a motivating event to ban data centers when those bans have happened, which is literally what you said?
GP was insisting that "rights" named laws always come after some negative event and it is weird that we have this "rights" named law without someone being deprived of their computation or whatever. I'm disagreeing with the premise that that's weird by pointing out laws preempt real world events all the time, in either direction (restrictive or permissive).
This question is not the obvious winner you think it is. To me, and I am sure many, it sort of undermines your argument.
Even in the most ‘free' cultures, society has _always_ restricted people’s individual ability to do things that it collectively deems harmful to the whole society.
I’m not even in complete disagreement with your opinion on data centers (like, people are coming up with noise, water use, pollution and traffic arguments about why a data center should not replace a recently controversially closed paper mill near me, which is ridiculous), but your argument doesn’t work. You need to change it if you want to convince people.
When those things impact other people - such as by skyrocketing utility prices, overloading the electrical grid, and more.
There have always been rules and laws. The US has never been a totally free market. Most of the laws and rules we have were written in blood by people professing a "free market" right to poison our people, rivers, air, and more.
Rent control stabilizes prices while more supply can be built, because it is in the interests of society for people to be able to afford to live, and we can't will additional buildings into place overnight. High eviction rates destroy communities and have many negative side effects.
In the absence of regulation, corporations lie, cheat, and steal, and have a massive power imbalance against ordinary people. No one has enough time and energy to research every option for everything in their daily life, and they rely on laws to establish safety measures they can rely on.
Not sure if that leaves it a free market. So if we're gonna be talking holes in the cheese - seems like you're reasoning in terms of a basically self-contradictory notion.
But truly, what do you reckon about the 1st point, in terms of the interpretation of market freedom which you use?
>>this is just me renting space... Okay, so a "network effect" is when things have greater impact due to larger usage. So the data center usage that you're talking about does not represent the overall impact of the data center. Saying "I only pour ONE cup of bleach into the ocean, so I don't see why it's so bad to have the bleach factory pump all its waste in as well" is a WILD take.
At least 4000 years ago, but that's just the earliest we have evidence for
Why would it be your business, or anyone else's, to stop someone from doing this?
China has 100 reactors under construction - meanwhile in the West, folks like you exist.
It should not be considered shocking or controversial that people already hit hard by corporate greed and other effects of late-stage capitalism don't want to pay higher utility rates to subsidize the data centers being built by megacorporations who want to take away even more of their jobs.
Because, in this country, we have “local government” wherein a bunch of people who live near each other have frequently banded together to make laws about the places they live. Surely this isn’t shocking news to you? Surely you’ve encountered this phenomenon before?
Why do you think you have a right to do anything you want, anywhere you want, no matter what?
How do we pick which activities are worth using resources? Which ones are too ‘dorky’ to allow?
Look, I am all for pricing the externalities into resource consumption. Tax carbon production, to make sure energy consumption is sustainable, but don’t dictate which uses of energy are acceptable or ‘worth it’, because I don’t want only mainstream things to be allowed.
A nice ban on playing recorded music would have saved those jobs.
Instead of banning tech to save jobs, pass laws that make sure tech prices in externalities (tax carbon emissions), and find other ways to assist people who lose jobs (UBI, good social safety nets, etc).
Don’t stifle progress just because it makes us have to work less.
This is like saying, "We don't like how landlords extract value from housing, so we are banning apartment buildings"
The situation with apartment buildings is even more quirky because the USA has quite ridiculous zoning regulations, which AIUI many landlords actually support? It's really a wonderful barrel of worms, and I am glad I have no paddle in it.
You are fighting against productivity improvements when you should be fighting against people hoarding the benefits of productivity improvements.
I agree that keeping everyone fed and sheltered is of primary importance... but wouldn't it be better to have everyone work less while doing that?
Let's have robots do all the hard work and then share the wealth with everyone. Why force people to work at jobs that could be done easier just to make sure we employee everyone? Might as well just pay people to move rocks back and forth.
Just increase taxes on robots and use that to pay basic income.
That sounds fantastic, except that in our capitalist economy the wealth will not be shared by everyone, and will instead be funnelled directly to the tech oligarchy, while workers get laid off. Until we fix that part of the equation, innovations to efficiency will continue to result in working people getting screwed over by technological innovation.
It will be equally politically difficult to ban AI as it would be to grab some of the wealth generated by AI for the exact same reasons - either attempt would be fought against by the same tech oligarchs, for the same reason. To protect their money.
If we are going to have to fight them anyway, let's fight for the one where we don't have to work jobs that could be done by computers instead, while still having the same income.
And we don't have to get rid of capitalism entirely to spread the wealth. UBI can be used in a capitalist society, too.
The US has continually set up protectionist policies to preserve a local workforce. Automotive manufacturers, the shipbuilding industry, etc.
If you mean besides the extensive harm to air quality, the large land fingerprint of data centers, the massive strain on water resources and treatment facilities, the insane electricity demands resulting in skyrocketing prices pushed onto everyone else, the deafening noise pollution, and what they've done to the price of RAM, then sure. And that's just the data centers!
The usage of AI itself has resulted in all kinds of harm and even actual deaths. AI has wrongfully denied people healthcare coverage they were entitled to preventing or delaying needed surgeries and treatments. There's a growing list of LLM related suicides (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_linked_to_chatbots). The use of AI in parole systems has kept people locked behind bars when they shouldn't have been due to biases in the bots making decisions. AI used for self-driving driving cars have killed pedestrians and other drivers. There are thousands of AI generated harms tracked here: https://airisk.mit.edu/ai-incident-tracker
So the only reason I can think of to forbid such use cases is that people in those professions fear being replaced by machines.
There's a big difference between ChatGPT writing a prescription and a doctor double checking his diagnosis using some kind of Claude code for medicine. ChatGPT writing prescriptions and giving medical device directly to people should absolutely be prohibited for now, but the second approach should be encouraged.
It really isn’t. How many surgeries do you think LLMs perform? How many of those medical errors would’ve been resolved by a chatbot? It’s easy to quote a big scary number and pretend like it has some vague relevance when you don’t actually understand the problem space.
I understand many deaths due to medical errors are caused by patients misunderstanding the advice they are given. You are saying you know exactly the net value of LLMs in this problem space?
I'm thoroughly disinterested in doing your homework for you. If you don't know how to answer that question, you shouldn't be opining in that space about things you clearly don't know anything about. It's that simple.
> Can you enlighten us and not leave us guessing?
You made the argument, you back it up. This is middle school shit. If you're not capable of understanding the subject matter, the best thing to do would be to stop asserting strident opinions about it as if you do, not be a smarmy jerk because someone called you on it.
> I understand many deaths due to medical errors are caused by patients misunderstanding the advice they are given.
Understand based on what, specifically? Many is a weasel word that people use to pretend that something happens frequently. What, specifically, do you mean by "medical error" in the first place? Do you know?
"Government actions that restrict the ability to privately own or make use of computational resources for lawful purposes, which infringes on citizens' fundamental rights to property and free expression, must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest."
"When critical infrastructure facilities are controlled in whole or in part by a critical artificial intelligence system, the deployer shall develop a risk management policy after deploying the system that is reasonable and considers guidance and standards in the latest version of the artificial intelligence risk management framework from the national institute of standards and technology, the ISO/IEC 4200 artificial intelligence standard from the international organization for standardization, or another nationally or internationally recognized risk management framework for artificial intelligence systems. A plan prepared under federal requirements constitutes compliance with this section."
In particular, I think the reporting is straight wrong that there's a shutdown requirement. That was in an earlier version (https://legiscan.com/MT/text/SB212/id/3078731) and remains in the title of this version, but seems to have been removed from the actual text.
This bill seems to expand powers, not restrict
I know the whole 90s meme of 'I am a controlled munition' went around because cryptography was labeled an ordnance subject to export control laws, and therefore code that performed those kind of computations were forbidden to be sold abroad, liable to a felony.
What happens today? Government gets rights to source code, logs, and rubber stamps/rejects your code from executing in the cloud?
Government limits your access to commodity infrastructure?
https://www.eff.org/cases/bernstein-v-us-dept-justice
Laws like this make it much simpler for someone to challenge a law or regulation. They don't have to convince the judge (and possibly appeals court) that building or using a computer is a form of protected expression, this law says it is.
It may seem kind of flimsy or non-consequential, but while it's not a massive change, it is a really change and it's constructive.
This is a complete sham. Anything really geared towards protecting people would have protections in place before deployment.
"The initiative... contrasts with recent restrictive legislation efforts in states like California and Virginia. Zolnikov, a noted advocate for privacy, has been instrumental in pushing for tech-friendly policies that ensure individual liberties in an evolving digital landscape.
"'As governments around the world and in our own country try to crack down on individual freedom and gain state control over modern technologies,' Zolnikov said. 'Montana is doing the opposite by protecting freedom and restraining the government.'"
And it's the normal framing we always see with this crap. This is more an attempt to protect corporations from regulation then it is to protect individuals.
I wonder why it is after rather than before?
You have the right to not provide custom software and firmware and technical documentation, the right to enforce remote attestation, and the right to refuse service to whoever you wish.
Just like all food sellers have the right not to provide documentation on the ingredients and nutrition of their products?
It may surprise you to learn that this is not within the purview of Montana state law.
I agree that they should have this right. My personal anecdote explains that the citizens of other countries do have this right without the world falling apart.
I agree that they should have this right. My personal anecdote explains that the citizens of other countries do have this right without the world falling apart.
> Refusing to do so should be criminalized on the same level as racism.
Racism isn’t criminal? At least not in any country anyone wants to live in lol
Given that, they will be computing in a restrictive and controlled environment. I feel sorry for them.
I am going to college (Computer Science) as an older student with previous experience in programming, and it never ceases to amaze me that the current generation of students doesn't think out of the box and is completely dependent on ChatGPT. We all suffered from conditioning from governments and corporations throughout the years, but it is accelerating at an alarming rate.
Acts like this (the one from Montana) are positive, but unfortunate that they simply have to exist and somewhat irrelevant when the big dogs (California, New York and whole countries such as Australia) approve legislation that will promptly be followed by most companies/projects, which will in turn force this way of things happening everywhere else.
> "Compelling government interest " means a government interest of the highest order in protecting the public that cannot be achieved through less restrictive means. This includes but is not limited to: (a) ensuring that a critical infrastructure facility controlled by an artificial intelligence system develops a risk management policy; (b) addressing conduct that deceives or defrauds the public; (c) protecting individuals, especially minors, from harm by a person who distributes deepfakes and other harmful synthetic content with actual knowledge of the nature of that material; and (d) taking actions that prevent or abate common law nuisances created by physical datacenter infrastructure.
D seems to address that potentially.
The scaling of federal power with population is also significant as states like Texas that allow for more housing to be built will probably receive more seats at the next apportionment while states like California will lose seats. Overall, pretty neat to see the design of America work quite well like this.
> but datacenters have few such externalities
Is wild. Energy consumption is one of the biggest externalities that exists today, since global climate change is completely independent of location. Greenhouse gases do not care about borders.
Perhaps you think that the distribution of financial resources reflects what is in society's best interests - that Meta, Google et al. have demonstrated their utility in ways that make them literally more important than people with insufficient wealth to outbid those companies for water.
Many of us do not.
Reminds me of a quote from some otherwise forgettable movie I saw: "My father left me with very little, except for all his money."
For the record, my net worth increased by about $1M before taxes based on the 1 year of options I got at amzn. But not relevant in this context.
If you don't actually boil it and instead return only lukewarm water you're looking at something like 15x more (I don't know the exact factor) due to how large the heat of vaporization is.
How exactly are they supposed to return (ballpark) 1 million people worth of water to the utility company? Let's again put this in perspective. The entire Seattle metropolitan area hosts ~4.1 million people. The entire state of Florida is only 23.5 million. This is an absurd amount of water we're taking about here.
This hasn't happened yet in New Mexico with a data center because these are new. But it has happened numerous times with other capital-rich entities that have bought water rights (sometimes, just cities buying rights from adjacent rural county land).
A small community near where I live no longer has functioning wells because new residential construction below them sucked the water out of the aquifer. They tried to drill deeper, without much success. County is now having to build a water line to the community.
- Strict limits on governmental regulation, wherein any restrictions must be demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to a compelling public safety or health interest.
- Mandatory safety protocols for AI-controlled critical infrastructure, including a shutdown mechanism and compulsory annual risk management reviews.
How were the necessity and scope of the second rule shown to satisfy the first rule?
In essence, it doesn't really mandate anything; it says you should have a plan, and only for "critical infrastructure facilities":
"Section 4. Infrastructure controlled by critical artificial intelligence system. (1) When critical infrastructure facilities are controlled in whole or in part by a critical artificial intelligence system, the deployer shall develop a risk management policy after deploying the system that is reasonable and considers guidance and standards in the latest version of the artificial intelligence risk management framework from the national institute of standards and technology, the ISO/IEC 4200 artificial intelligence standard from the international organization for standardization, or another nationally or internationally recognized risk management framework for artificial intelligence systems. A plan prepared under federal requirements constitutes compliance with this section."
So it's essentially lip service to AI safety, probably to quell some objections to a bill that otherwise limits regulation of tech platforms.
This should be the default policy on regulation. We shouldn't need a specific law to enact it.
What the bill actually does (based on typical legislation of this type) is preempt local zoning and environmental review for large compute facilities. That's a legitimate policy choice, but calling it a "right" is doing a lot of rhetorical work.
For comparison: Wyoming and Texas have done similar things for data centers via tax incentives rather than regulatory preemption. Both approaches get data centers built; they just differ in who captures the value.
So I don't think current English is in some perfect state that should not change.
On god.
FTA: right to own, access, and use computational resources
It's a verb.
Like the region I live in is cold and has lots of water, but we import energy, might as well build closer to the regional mega cities (where it is still relatively cold, with relatively abundant water). There is some kerfuffle going on in the county here about preventing data centers, and I can't imagine there is even anyone interested in building one.
I would say considering there has been almost a year since this bill was signed, what happened since then? Was it applied to hurt people's interests? Did it drive investment?
Are Montanans demonstrably better or worse off because of this in some way?
I was hoping for that as a reaction to the current tyrannical movements worldwide to end anonymous personal computing.
2) Read your Marx. Liberty doesn't arrive from toxic individualism, it arrives from the fulfillment of man's nature as a social-creative animal. AI is a tool used by the bourgeoisie to further alienate us from each other; as is right-libertarian individualism.
It's ridiculous that AIco's arguments are dwindling down to "it's not copyright infringement to ingest others' work and make 'derivatives' [which often are identical to original authors' works]."
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We desperately need younger politicians, who can not only keep up with information more sharply (i.e. aren't legally decades-retireable), but also are of the age where their own children are being affected by government re-funding flows away from youth/education/future.
At this point I'm willing to concede that our future probably has companies' individual LLM/genAI products competing against one-another, as digital politicians ["the digital pimp, hard at work... we have needs"--Matrix' Mouse]. Nobody knows how either flesh nor silicon congressmen work, inside; but I think the latter could act more human[e]ly...
I would answer that this is both unethical AND illegal (i.e copyright violation), but kids whom pirate music regularly would pirate both music and art, without regard.
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If your question is something else, please write it differently, below:
what a weaselly name, this would make the most cutthroat ad exec blush with embarrassment
Oh cool!
Look inside
No mention of:
- Self-repair
- Self-service
- Hardware and software modifications
- Protecting consumers from proprietary anti-circumvention tools
- Bolstering open source
- Better access to technology in early ages (through funding primary schools and libraries)
- Dedicated computer and Internet crisis response teams to tackle disinformation, cyberattacks, cyberbullying, and state-sponsored attacks
- Improving citizen's access to End-to-End encryption software - Sovereign AI and software
Very cool, Montana. What a load of nothing.
The AI part honestly looks fairly harmless, just applying existing standards, but I may be wrong there...
TL;DR: Basically the AI industry trying to ban governments from regulating it
why is this posted now?
https://frontierinstitute.org/frontier-institute-statement-i...
Ah.
Read: industry can do whatever we want, but the government also has to put up barriers to entry that favor large incumbents.
This has nothing to do with rights or even computing, it's just regulatory capture.
Similarly, if I see the People For X organization, I assume they are against X. The Committee for Green Spaces and Clean Air is guaranteed to be an oil company.
Once you develop that reflex, everything calms down. Though admittedly, I passed a sign for Fidos for Freedom. I'm not quite sure what Fidos Against Freedom does. I think they give dogs to disabled people, and they bark at you if you try to leave the house.
So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
E.g. HIPAA security rule updates
I would think if a power plant deploys some AI model to optimize something or other, it would be on the plant operator to perform the reviews, regardless of who they get the AI from.
“What about my water?”- not an issue in this area.
“What about my electric bill?”- we’re signing long term contracts with local power companies or building out our own capacity; we eat the marginal costs and don’t increase your bill.
“What about noise?”- we’re far enough away from the nearest person that they cannot hear us; fans are x decibels at y distance; not a problem.
“I saw on Facebook that data centers poison the water and spy on me”- seek help, you cannot block us from building out and giving you oodles of tax money for this nonsense reason.
Also, what happens when we don’t need such enormous data centers anymore? How many communities in the U.S. are saddled with enormous dead malls while the developers walk away with zero liability?
You've never heard of tax avoidance, have you?
https://itep.org/trump-meta-tesla-alphabet-amazon-obbba-taxe...
Definitely don't live in my area.
>we eat the marginal costs and don’t increase your bill.
my electricity bill vehemently disagrees.
Reminds me of some bill in my state about Right to Farm and when you looked deeper it was about rights for huge corporate hog farms to dump waste in the rivers. The slimiest corps always do this 1984 level double talk when they name their bills. It’s a dead giveaway. Citizens United, oh wow cool this is about protecting citizens!
The point isn't whether it's bad or good, but that it establishes a pattern of inconsistency.
I need the right to not use a computer for any reason whatsoever! Every business transaction, doctors visit, buying food, it all requires an app or a phone these days. it will only get worse. We need the right to not use some techbro's app in order to survive.
Always follow the money: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Frontier_Institute
Instead, it's wasted on AI slop.
The "Citizen Right to Compute" complement to the "Data Center Right to Compute".
Use the latter as leverage for the former. What politician wants to be seen downvoting (comparable) individual's right they already gave to data centers?
EDIT for the downvoters, from the law:
> Any restrictions placed by the government on the ability to privately own or make use of computational resources for lawful purposes must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest in public health or safety.
This basically means you can't use government action to stop the building of a data-center.
Your explanation seems reasonable.