Dear Senator:
On behalf of the AFL-CIO, I am writing to urge you to vote YES on an Amendment offered by Senators Cantwell and Markey (#2763) to strike the controversial provision in the budget reconciliation bill that would ban the enactment or enforcement of state and local laws that protect working people from the unsafe and unethical use of artificial intelligence (AI).
The AI preemption or moratorium language simply needs to be struck, as Cantwell/Markey would do. The so-called “compromise” Blackburn/Cruz amendment (#2602) is not an overall improvement to the bill. While it leaves working people vulnerable to AI abuses for 5 instead of the 10 years proposed in the underlying bill, amendment #2602 is dangerously worse than the original version in a big way. Under the Blackburn/Cruz amendment, even long-standing common law cannot be enforced against AI abuses if it would create an "undue or disproportionate burden" for tech companies. This big favor to multibillion dollar companies, which want to turn our personal data into their personal profit, will leave all of us vulnerable to an extraordinarily unaccountable Big Tech industry in all sorts of new ways, hampering any individual’s efforts to address a wide range of AI-inflicted harms, from fraud to invasions of privacy to negligence.
Beyond shielding unscrupulous Big Tech companies from their victims, this heavy-handed provision – whether the original moratorium language or the Blackburn/Cruz version – would stop or block existing AI legislation in about 40 states. Republican and Democratic officials alike – from governors to state legislators and attorneys general - have called for the removal of the AI moratorium from the budget reconciliation bill. Please take a stand against this outrageous overreach by Big Tech companies and protect us from a lawless AI future. Reject the “compromise” amendment and vote YES on the Cantwell/Markey amendment (#2763) to strike the ban on state and local regulation of AI.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Jody Calemine
Director, Government Affairs