Kentucky convened an AI task force last year and passed Senate Bill 4, a measurement to create a "risk-based framework for the responsible use of AI in state government and elections."
The lawmaker behind that legislation, Lexington Republican Sen. Amanda Maya Bledsoe, is set to lead a similar panel this year. She recently told WUKY about what she hoped to tackle over the summer.
"This next step is gonna be all around the uses of AI. So how much data do we need? How much energy consumption? Land use is a very controversial conversation right now around the state, not to mention energy consumption needs and how to prioritize that, especially in education," Bledsoe said. "So we're gonna do some deeper dives into those, kind of next step areas of AI."
But the item in the Trump spending bill, putting a decade-long pause on state AI rulemaking, would mean halting enforcement of most laws that states have passed in regards to AI protections.
The federal spending and tax cut bill emerged from a panel chaired by another Kentuckian, US Congressman Brett Guthrie, who leads the House Commerce and Energy Committee. Guthrie told Politico the idea for the moratorium sprang from concerns about the patchwork of AI laws coming online around the nation.
"We're preempting 50 states to have a federal guardrail and federal standard," he said. "We're still working on the guardrail because we actually want our Commerce Department to implement AI and so we put money for them to do so. (Having) 50 different states for even the federal government to deal with is difficult. But that's the intent is we have a national standard."
But the AI moratorium is likely to face challenges in the Senate where Republicans are divided over the provision.