Beyond a Moratorium: Toward a Competency-Based Approach to AI Governance
As state legislatures across the country prepare to convene in early 2026, a predictable panic is setting in among the architects of the artificial-intelligence (AI) revolution.
From Sacramento to Hartford, legislation appears certain to proliferate seeking to regulate everything from algorithmic discrimination to the fundamental compute power used to train large language models (LLMs). The industry response has been equally predictable: a desperate plea for federal preemption, a moratorium on state action, or an aspirational reliance upon the Dormant Commerce Clause to strike down fractured compliance regimes.
While legally plausible, we’ve seen over the past week that this lobbying strategy is fraught with political risk for the long-term viability of AI governance.