Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., is backing a federal artificial intelligence (AI) regulatory plan built on sector-by-sector oversight, codifying the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), and preserving states’ ability to legislate without intruding on federal interstate commerce authority.
Obernolte said he is seeking bipartisan support to advance the framework as standalone legislation.
The representative, who is reportedly working on an AI regulation bill in coordination with the Trump administration, said Thursday morning at the Incompas Policy Summit in Washington that he’s looking to bring Democrats and Republicans together to support a sectoral regulatory approach to AI.
“The FDA [Food and Drug Administration] has already issued thousands of permits for the use of AI and medical devices, and that is probably the highest risk usage that you can think of,” Obernolte said. “There could be a model that is unacceptably risky in something like a pacemaker that’s going to be implanted in someone’s body, but completely benign in another deployment context, maybe in a video game, right?”
“Same model, two different deployments, completely different risk profiles. And so that’s what sectoral regulation accomplishes,” Obernolte continued.
That idea is not unique to the Trump administration, the representative explained. The Biden administration’s U.S. AI Safety Institute began creating an inventory of technical tools, knowledge, standards, and testing and evaluation methodologies for AI, which has continued under President Donald Trump under the new name, CAISI.
Obernolte said that CAISI should continue that work and “be the agency that creates a regulatory toolbox that then can be handed to any software regulators … to be able to regulate within their sectoral spaces.”
“You have to pair that with … a preemptive framework that makes it clear to the states what is under Article I of the Constitution, interstate commerce, and therefore reserved for regulation only at the federal level and outside those guardrails where the states are free to be the laboratories of democracy that they are,” Obernolte added.
In December, Trump signed an executive order to preempt most state-level AI laws. The order was signed with the intent of creating a singular regulatory AI framework to avoid a patchwork of state laws that could limit innovation, according to the White House.
Prior to the order, Republicans attempted to pass a 10-year moratorium on state AI laws as part of the fiscal spending and tax bill last summer, which the Senate ultimately dropped.
The moratorium was controversial – several top Republicans joined Democrats in opposing it – but also misunderstood, Obernolte explained.
“We never expected to even get it out of Energy and Commerce. This was kind of what we call a messaging amendment. We thought that the conversation needed to be had,” Obernolte said, adding that he was “flabbergasted when it got off the floor of the House,” and “wasn’t surprised at all when the Senate stripped it.”
“What we were saying was not that states shouldn’t have a lane in the regulation of AI, what we were saying is that the federal government needs to go first and define where the lanes are,” Obernolte explained.
By codifying CAISI – which the representative said he plans to do soon – and implementing a sectoral regulation framework, “you’ve got something that really hangs together,” Obernolte said.
The lawmaker said that when Congress does pass legislation to federally regulate AI, he wants it to have bipartisan support.
“[T]o do anything substantive, we need 60 votes in the Senate. So, we’re going to need whatever we come up with to be bipartisan,” Obernolte said.
“The average American [does] not have any confidence that the government is on the job in preventing these [bad AI] outcomes,” he added. “I mean, we’re in an era of intense partisan disagreement, right? And certainly there’s a lot of conflict between the two parties, but when you get down under the hood on committees like [those that are] science-based and technology, it’s amazing how bipartisan things are.”