الكونغرس يلغي حظر تنظيم الذكاء الاصطناعي في الولايات

The U.S. Senate, led by Republicans, voted overwhelmingly to lift a decade-long federal ban on state regulation of artificial intelligence technology as part of a comprehensive tax and spending bill introduced by President Donald Trump.

99 members of the Senate supported an amendment introduced by Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn to remove the ban, while Republican Senator Tom Tillis was the only member who voted to keep the ban.

This move came during an intense session known as "Vote-a-Rama," where lawmakers introduced numerous amendments to the legislation that Republicans hope to pass, and the Senate later approved the tax bill by a vote of 51 to 50.

The original version of the bill restricted states regulating artificial intelligence from benefiting from a new $500 million fund to support AI infrastructure.

Major artificial intelligence companies, such as Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, and OpenAI, expressed their support for Congress taking over the regulation of artificial intelligence instead of the states, to avoid a patchwork of regulations that could hinder innovation.

For her part, Senator Maria Cantwell, the leading Democrat on the Commerce Committee, praised the vote, emphasizing that good consumer protection laws in the states cannot be overridden. States are capable of combating robocalls and deepfakes and providing safe laws for self-driving vehicles.

Additionally, 17 Republican governors called on Congress to lift the ban, with Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders stating: "We will now be able to protect our children from the risks of unregulated artificial intelligence."

Blackburn introduced her amendment to lift the ban a day after she agreed to a compromise with Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, which would have limited the ban to five years and allowed states to regulate issues such as protecting artists' rights or online child safety, provided they do not impose an unjustified or disproportionate burden on artificial intelligence.

However, Blackburn withdrew her support for the compromise before the vote on the amendment, asserting that Congress should not prevent states from enacting laws that protect their citizens until comprehensive federal legislation, such as the Children's Online Safety Act and an electronic privacy framework, is passed.