America Needs a Moratorium on State AI Laws

Originally posted on X. 

Artificial intelligence isn’t some dystopian threat waiting to strike. It’s already here—helping millions of Americans every day. If you’ve used Apple Maps, searched something on Google, played a video game, or dictated text, you’ve used AI. These tools have made life more productive, better, and convenient for decades. Now that AI is finally affordable and widely accessible, states treat it like a threat, so a moratorium on state AI laws is necessary.

Consider the explosion of state bills filed on this topic, which were about 600 in 2024 and more than 1,000 already this year. This is a direct threat to innovation, economic liberty, and America’s competitive edge. That’s why we need a federal moratorium on new state AI laws. This approach isn’t to grow government, but to pause 50 state bureaucracies from strangling the digital economy with contradictory, performative mandates.

Let’s be clear: this explosion of legislation isn’t just targeting “Big Tech,” as many conservatives seem poised to do. It’s targeting small business owners, developers, educators, and families using AI tools to improve their daily lives.
In short: The plethora of state laws is punishing users, not abusers.

What about a homeschool parent relying on AI to build lesson plans? Caught in a compliance trap. Will your rural business need automated customer service? Overwhelmed by a state audit. Could a student using AI better learn how to code? Banned by schools reacting to headlines instead of evidence.

When fear drives policy, freedom is crushed. Fear is the driver in many statehouses, including Texas, Colorado, and others. Most of these laws are driven by the precautionary principle—a popular but deeply flawed idea that we must regulate what we don’t fully understand “just in case.” It sounds responsible. It’s not.

The precautionary principle has already deprived us of innovations like flying cars, modernized nuclear energy, and faster medical breakthroughs. Now, it’s aiming at AI. This mindset doesn’t make us safer. It blocks progress before it starts, particularly for those without a lobbyist or legal team to navigate the mess. And the cost of that lost opportunity isn’t abstract—it’s jobs, productivity, and personal empowerment.

As a classical liberal who deeply values federalism and local control, I don’t take the idea of federal preemption lightly. But there’s a difference between empowering communities and empowering 50 separate governments to bulldoze liberty under the guise of “leadership.”

Local control is with individuals, families, and communities, not local governments. It’s the family choosing the right tech for their kids, the entrepreneur automating work to grow a company, or the patient using AI to understand their health. When states insert themselves into those decisions, they’re not defending local control. They’re smothering it.

AI doesn’t respect state borders. It’s not a local issue—it’s national and global. Trying to regulate it with 50 conflicting rulebooks is like governing the internet with paper maps. A federal moratorium would hit pause, not cancel oversight. It would block new, conflicting mandates long enough to craft an innovative, minimalist framework. It would protect innovation while still allowing basic consumer protections.

There’s a precedent: the Internet Tax Freedom Act of 1998. That federal pause on state taxes for internet access helped fuel the digital revolution. AI deserves the same breathing room.

If the moratorium or something like it doesn't happen, America risks ceding the future to countries like China, where communist governing directs resources rather than profits. We don’t want their communist model and they won't beat us because they have a flawed political and economic model, but we need coherence to compete.

The free market is our greatest engine for progress. AI is the next chapter in that success story, if politicians let it happen. But with over fifteen hundred state laws introduced in 18 months, too many are regulating first, asking questions later.

Now is not the time for a patchwork of reactionary mandates but for a principled pause. Let’s stop the regulatory land grab and ensure that the future of AI is built by people, not buried by politics.