What’s happening today?

The U.S. House has advanced a major “big, beautiful bill” that includes a ten-year moratorium on any state-level AI regulations, touching off intense industry and political backlash.

Critics – from AI safety advocates to state attorneys general – warn that the ban would roll back existing protections on data privacy, facial recognition, and automated decision systems in states like California and Colorado, effectively freezing the regulatory clock for a decade. 

In response, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei authored a New York Times op-ed condemning the moratorium as “far too blunt an instrument” and calling instead for a clear, federal transparency standard requiring AI firms to publicly disclose testing protocols and risk-mitigation steps. 

At the same time, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified before the Senate that a “patchwork of AI regulations” across 50 states “would be quite burdensome and significantly impair our ability to do what we need to do,” and urged lawmakers to adopt “one federal framework, that is light touch” to ensure innovation keeps pace with international competitors. 

This clash highlights the urgent balance between fostering rapid AI development – especially to compete with China – and safeguarding against systemic risks, with both sides staking out sharply different visions for governance that will shape the industry’s trajectory in 2025.

What does AI think?