ATLANTA – A Georgia Senate examine committee on Wednesday set a broad framework for figuring out how the state ought to regulate rising synthetic intelligence know-how to guard the general public with out stifling innovation.
“(AI) will actually treatment most cancers,” Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, the examine committee’s chairman, stated throughout the panel’s first assembly. “Nonetheless, it additionally has the propensity to do nice hurt. … It’s going to impression and alter issues like by no means earlier than.”
A number of legislative committees held hearings on AI final 12 months, and a invoice was launched within the Georgia Home of Representatives throughout this 12 months’s legislative session to criminalize using “deepfakes” generated by synthetic intelligence to impersonate candidates in political adverts. Home Invoice 986 overwhelmingly handed the Home however died within the Senate.
On Wednesday, the brand new Senate examine committee agreed on a broad vary of coverage areas AI will have an effect on that must be addressed in any laws Georgia lawmakers provide you with, together with well being care, public security, schooling, and transportation.
Overlapping all of these classes is the right way to regulate AI in a means that ensures the know-how is getting used ethically and transparently. A Home committee planning to start assembly quickly may even take up that subject, stated Rep. Brad Thomas, R-Holly Springs, who was the chief sponsor of the deep-fakes invoice.
Georgia could possibly be among the many first states to undertake rules for AI. Whereas the European Union’s Parliament adopted AI laws final March, Colorado is the one U.S. state to have completed so, Hayley Williams, director of the state Senate Workplace of Coverage and Legislative Evaluation, advised the Senate panel.
Congress to date hasn’t handed any AI rules, she stated.
“It’s a really advanced universe to cope with and really troublesome to manage,” she stated. “The fact is, the impression is simply too enormous to not regulate.”
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Williams stated the EU’s Synthetic Intelligence Act, which is able to take impact in 2026, regulates AI programs based mostly on the danger they pose to the general public. AI programs that pose an “unacceptable” danger are prohibited altogether, whereas programs thought of to pose “minimal” danger usually are not regulated in any respect.
European firms that fail to conform face stiff fines, Williams stated. Colorado’s legislation doesn’t impose fines for non-compliance, she stated.
Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania, stated the examine committee’s objective must be to foster innovation within the improvement of AI in Georgia with much less emphasis on imposing restrictions just like the EU mannequin.
However Sen. Jason Esteves, D-Atlanta, stated regulating AI programs to guard the general public additionally should be an essential objective.
“The first perform of presidency is to guard its residents,” he stated. “We must be making certain we shield residents from the potential impacts of AI.”
Albers stated he plans to schedule seven or eight conferences of the examine committee this summer time and fall earlier than the panel makes suggestions to the complete Senate. The following assembly is about for July 17.
