Latest news with #statelegislatures
Fox News
4 days ago
- Business
- Fox News
Federal AI power grab could end state protections for kids and workers
Just as AI begins to upend American society, Congress is considering a move that would sideline states from enforcing commonsense safeguards. Tucked into the recently passed House reconciliation package is Section 43201, a provision that would pre-empt nearly all state and local laws governing "artificial intelligence models," "artificial intelligence systems," and "automated decision systems" for the next 10 years. Last night, the Senate released its own version of the moratorium that would restrict states from receiving federal funding for broadband infrastructure if they don't fall in line. Supporters argue that a moratorium is needed to avoid a patchwork of state rules that could jeopardize U.S. AI competitiveness. But this sweeping approach threatens to override legitimate state efforts to curb Big Tech's worst abuses—with no federal safeguards to replace them. It also risks undermining the constitutional role of state legislatures to protect the interests and rights of American children and working families amid AI's far-reaching social and economic disruptions. In the absence of Congressional action, states have been the first line of defense against Big Tech. Texas, Florida, Utah, and other states have led the way to protect children online, safeguard data privacy, and rein in platform censorship. Section 43201 puts many of those laws—even those not directly related to AI—at risk. The provision defines "automated decision systems" broadly, potentially capturing core functions of social media platforms, such as TikTok's For You feed or Instagram's recommendation engine. At least 12 states have enacted laws requiring parental consent or age verification for minors accessing these platforms. However, because these laws specifically apply to social media platforms, they could easily be construed as regulating "automated decision systems"— and thus be swept up in the moratorium. Further, Section 43201 might also block provisions of existing state privacy laws that restrict the use of algorithms—including AI—to predict consumer behavior, preferences, or characteristics. Even setting aside concerns with the moratorium's expansive scope, it suffers from a more fundamental flaw. The moratorium threatens to short-circuit American federalism by undermining state laws that ensure AI lives up to the promise outlined by Vice President J.D. Vance. Speaking at the Paris AI Summit, he warned against viewing "AI as a purely disruptive technology that will inevitably automate away our labor force." Instead, Vance called for "policies that ensure that AI… make[s] our workers more productive" and rewards them with "higher wages, better benefits, and safer and more prosperous communities." That vision is nearly impossible without state-level action. Legislators, governors, and attorneys general from Nashville to Salt Lake City are already advancing creative, democratically accountable solutions. Tennessee's novel ELVIS Act protects music artists from nonconsensual AI-generated voice and likeness cloning. Utah's AI consumer protection law requires that generative AI model deployers notify consumers when they are interacting with an AI. Other states, including Arkansas and Montana, are building legal frameworks for digital property rights with respect to AI models, algorithms, data, and model outputs. All of this is now at risk. As laboratories of democracy, states are essential to navigating the inevitable and innumerable trade-offs entailed by the diffusion of emerging technologies. Federalism enables continuous experimentation and competition between states—exposing the best and worst approaches to regulation in highly dynamic environments. That's critical when confronting AI's vast and constantly evolving sphere of impact on children and employment—to say nothing of the technology's wider socio-economic effects. Sixty leading advocacy and research organizations have warned that AI chatbots pose a significant threat to kids. They cite harrowing stories of teens who have been induced to suicide, addiction, sexual perversion, and self-harm at the hands of Big AI. Even industry leaders are sounding alarms: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei estimates that AI could force up to 20% unemployment over the next five years. Innovation inherently brings disruption—but disruption without guardrails can harm the very communities AI is purportedly meant to uplift. That's why 40 state attorneys general, Democrats and Republicans alike, signed a letter opposing Section 43201, warning that it would override "carefully tailored laws targeting specific harms related to the use of AI." To be sure, not all laws are drafted equal. States like California and Colorado are imposing European-style AI regulations particularly detrimental to "Little Tech" and open-source model developers. But Congress shouldn't throw out federalism with the "doomer" bathwater. Rather than a blanket pre-emption, it should consider narrow, targeted limits carefully tailored to stymie high-risk bills—modeled on California and Colorado's approach—that foist doomer AI standards on the rest of the nation. Absent a comprehensive federal AI framework, states must retain freedom to act—specifically, to ensure that AI bolsters American innovation and competitiveness in pursuit of a thriving middle class. America's AI future has great potential. But our laboratories of democracy are key to securing it.
Malay Mail
17-05-2025
- Business
- Malay Mail
40 US states push back against AI moratorium in Trump's sweeping tax bill
SAN FRANCISCO, May 17 — A mix of Democratic and Republican state attorneys yesterday called on Congress to reject a moratorium on regulating artificial intelligence included in US President Donald Trump's tax bill. Top attorneys representing 40 states signed a letter urging leaders in Congress to reject the AI regulation moratorium language added to the budget reconciliation bill. 'The impact of such a broad moratorium would be sweeping and wholly destructive of reasonable state efforts to prevent known harms associated with AI,' the letter states. 'This bill will affect hundreds of existing and pending state laws passed and considered by both Republican and Democratic state legislatures.' The amendment added by the House Energy and Commerce Committee to the budget reconciliation bill imposes a 10-year prohibition on states from enforcing any state regulation addressing AI or 'automated decision-making systems,' according to the state attorneys. 'The amendment added to the reconciliation bill abdicates federal leadership and mandates that all states abandon their leadership in this area as well,' the state attorneys general wrote. 'This bill does not propose any regulatory scheme to replace or supplement the laws enacted or currently under consideration by the states, leaving Americans entirely unprotected from the potential harms of AI.' The letter notes that states have put in place laws designed to protect against AI-generated porn, deepfakes intended to mislead voters, and spam calls or text messages. Some state laws have also been crafted to prevent biases in AI models. 'These laws and their regulations have been developed over years through careful consideration and extensive stakeholder input from consumers, industry, and advocates,' the letter read. Republican fiscal hawks on Friday sunk a key vote on advancing the mega-bill that is the centerpiece of Trump's domestic agenda, in a significant setback for the US president's tax and spending policies. Trump is pushing to usher into law his so-called 'One Big, Beautiful Bill' pairing an extension of his first-term tax cuts with savings that will see millions of the poorest Americans lose their health care coverage. But a congressional Republican Party rife with divisions and competition within its rank-and-file has complicated the process, raising serious doubts that the sprawling package can pass a vote of the full House of Representatives next week. The budget committee's no vote is not the final word on the package, which will be reworked and sent back to the panel for more debate starting 10:00 pm on Sunday (0200 GMT Monday) and a fresh vote. — AFP
New York Times
08-05-2025
- Health
- New York Times
What to Know About mRNA Vaccines
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has repeatedly questioned the safety of mRNA vaccines against Covid-19. Scientists with funding from the National Institutes of Health were advised to scrub their grants of any reference to mRNA. Around the country, state legislatures are considering bills to ban or limit such vaccines, with one describing them as weapons of mass destruction. While mRNA, or messenger RNA, has received widespread attention in recent years, scientists first discovered it in 1961. They have been studying it and exploring its promise in preventing infectious diseases and treating cancer and rare diseases ever since. What is mRNA? A large molecule found in all of our cells, mRNA is used to make every protein that our DNA directs our bodies to build. It does so by carrying information from DNA in the nucleus out to a cell's protein-making machinery. A single mRNA molecule can be used to make many copies of a protein, but it is naturally programmed to die eventually, said Jeff Coller, a professor of RNA biology and therapeutics at Johns Hopkins University and a co-founder of an RNA therapeutics company. How do mRNA vaccines work? Right now, there are three FDA-approved vaccines available that use mRNA, two for Covid-19 and one for R.S.V., or respiratory syncytial virus, in older adults. These vaccines consist of strands of mRNA that code for specific viral proteins. Say you get a Covid-19 vaccine. The strands of mRNA, packaged into tiny fat particles, go into your muscle and immune cells, said Robert Alexander Wesselhoeft, director of RNA therapeutics at the Gene and Cell Therapy Institute at Mass General Brigham. Protein factories in the cells then take instructions from the mRNA and manufacture a protein like the one found on the surface of a Covid-19 virus. Your body recognizes that protein as foreign, and mounts an immune response. Most of the mRNA will be gone within a few days, but the body retains a 'memory" of it in the form of antibodies, Dr. Coller said. As with other types of vaccines, immunity wanes both over time and as a virus evolves into new variants. Why are mRNA vaccines being used now? In the mid-2000s, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania figured out how to get foreign mRNA into human cells without it degrading first. That enabled researchers to develop it for use in vaccines. The main use for such vaccines right now is to prevent infectious diseases, like Covid-19 and R.S.V., said Dr. Wesselhoeft, who founded a company that develops RNA therapies. The mRNA vaccines can be made very quickly because all of the components, other than the RNA sequence, remain the same across different vaccines. This feature could be helpful for developing the annual flu vaccine, said Florian Krammer, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who has previously consulted for Pfizer and CureVac on mRNA therapies. Typically, scientists decide in February or March which influenza virus strains to include in a vaccine that will be rolled out in the United States in September. But by that time, a different strain may be dominant. Because an mRNA vaccine can be manufactured more quickly than the current flu shot, scientists could wait until May or June to see which strains are circulating, Dr. Krammer said, increasing the likelihood the vaccine will be effective. Do these vaccines have risks? A common question patients ask is whether an mRNA vaccine can affect their DNA, Dr. Boucher said. The answer is no. Our cells cannot convert mRNA into DNA, which means that it can't be incorporated into our genome. The vaccine for Covid-19 can cause muscle aches and flulike symptoms, but these are expected side effects for vaccines generally, Dr. Krammer said. It's been more than four years since the Covid-19 vaccine was first rolled out 'and there are not long-term safety signals,' said Dr. Adam Ratner, a pediatric infectious disease specialist in New York. Many parents were concerned about myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that was reported as a possible side effect of the vaccine. But, Dr. Ratner said, the risk of such inflammation from an actual Covid-19 infection, or of long Covid or multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, was far greater. What else can mRNA be used for? Vaccines using mRNA are currently being studied for a wide range of diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disorders like Type 1 diabetes and rare diseases like cystic fibrosis, a genetic condition that results in excessively thick, sticky mucus that can plug the airways and damage the lungs. In cancer, the idea is that the mRNA codes for a tumor protein that the immune system will recognize as foreign, telling the body to attack the tumor. In a genetic disorder like cystic fibrosis, it codes for a functioning version of a deficient protein to replace the faulty one and restore the mucus to healthy state. A paper in the journal Nature earlier this year showed that an experimental mRNA vaccine for pancreatic cancer provoked an immune response in some patients after they had undergone surgery for the cancer. Patients who experienced that immune response lived longer without cancer than patients who did not. Another recent paper showed that, in monkeys, an inhaled mRNA therapy could produce a protein needed to form cilia, the hairlike structures that line our airways and move mucus out of them. These proteins malfunction in a debilitating respiratory disorder called primary ciliary dyskinesia. This research is still in early stages: The pancreatic cancer study, a Phase I trial, included only 16 patients, and there may have been other differences between the two groups that accounted for the different survival times. There is a long history of research showing that interventions may lead to immune responses without actually changing patients' outcomes, explained Dr. Steven Rosenberg, chief of the surgery branch at the National Cancer Institute and an expert in cancer immunotherapy. Dr. Richard Boucher, a pulmonologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, noted that for lung diseases, it's extremely difficult to safely get the particles carrying mRNA into exactly the right cells. In general, Dr. Ratner said, mRNA vaccines are 'exciting' in that they offer hope for disease treatments where prior technologies have failed. But mRNA therapy is still a drug technology like any other: In some diseases it likely will work, he said, 'and in other cases it probably won't.'
