AI regulation forthcoming at the State House

BOSTON (WWLP) – The Bay State Senate advanced a suite of artificial intelligence bills, representing some of the first legal regulations for the emerging technology.
Late last week, a Senate committee in charge of providing recommendations on complicated technology and internet matters advanced five bills, each regulating AI.
These bills are meant to set a framework for how AI models should be developed and used, as well as make rules surrounding the creation of certain types of content.
One bill allows employers to use AI as an electronic monitoring tool, provided they receive employee consent and the results of this data collection are not used as the primary factor contributing to hiring and firing decisions.
Another would create a board called MassCompute that would be tasked with overseeing safe and ethical applications of AI. MassCompute would likely oversee AI use in health care, which is also dealt with in a third bill, that clarifies how AI can be used as a tool in making decisions about health care decisions made by providers.
Two bills deal directly with content creation, with one prohibiting the use of generative AI to create or distribute child sex abuse materials, and another forbidding the spreading election misinformation, with or without the use of AI.
These bills begin to set legal expectations around AI in a current landscape where developers and users, from individuals to corporations, are essentially flying blind.
As artificial intelligence and its applications continue to evolve, State House initiatives will need to evolve alongside them.
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