AI regulation is afoot at the MN lege
Back in December I expressed a hope that Minnesota legislators would get going on regulating artificial “intelligence” despite Trump’s executive order ostensibly prohibiting them from doing so. It doesn’t surprise me that something’s happening. What does surprise me is the bipartisan effort.
Some mental health professionals in Minnesota are wary of the use of artificial intelligence in psychotherapy services. State legislators advanced a bill on Wednesday, March 18, to regulate it.
The House Health Finance and Policy Committee approved a bill by Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover, that would manage the ways mental health providers in the state use AI in their practices. Scott’s bill specifically aims to restrict AI’s decision-making capacities in mental health services.
(KAXE)
Rep. Scott is a right-wing Republican. The House bill’s other Party of Trump sponsor is Rep. Kristin Robbins (R-Maple Grove). The remaining four listed authors are DFLers. You can also see on that page that the bill is moving along, though passage into law is still a ways off. The Senate companion bill has bipartisan authorship as well.
So at least some Republicans in the MN lege are well aware that the combination of extremely well-grounded public suspicion of AI with Trump’s political (and personal) weakness makes this effort not only safe, but smart. There are suggestions out there that Trump’s order is mostly meaningless PR anyway, and I will note that I have yet to see news of any effort to use it to try to overturn existing state-level AI regulations. But I’m digging it anyway, and I hope to see this, and a lot more AI regulation, be adopted in coming years.
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