Image Credit: TN General Assembly
The Tennessee Conservative [By Paula Gomes] –
Legislation that would enact the “Artificial Intelligence Public Safety and Child Protection Transparency Act” passed in the House Government Operations Committee on Monday in a 11 to 0 unanimous vote and has been referred to the House Calendar and Rules Committee.
Sponsored by Representative Jason Zachary (R-Knoxville-District 14), House Bill 1898 as amended establishes safety requirements for the “largest, most powerful AI companies in Tennessee,” otherwise known as “frontier models,” named in the legislation as xAI, OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Anthropic.
In his introduction of the bill to committee members, Zachary stated that the bill puts “guardrails in place, focusing on two key areas.” The first is catastrophic public safety risk by frontier models which include cyber attacks, weapons assistance, large scale physical or economic harm, or loss of control that Zachary called the “sky net provision.” The second key area is child safety in regard to risk posed by chat bots that minors interact with, in some cases, on a daily basis.
According to Zachary, two out of three teens use AI on a consistent basis, with thirty percent using it everyday.
Zachary says the legislation does three things:
First, it requires AI companies to implement, publish, and comply with their own plans for how they manage both catastrophic risk and how they manage the risk to children, including making clear guidelines, while “continually updating and providing substantial modification updates when needed.”
Second, if there is a safety incident, the frontier model must report it within fifteen days to the Tennessee Attorney General who has sole enforcement discretion. Should an incident pose “an imminent risk of death or physical injury,” the report must be made within 24 hours.
Third, these frontier models and chat bots must comply with any legislation passed by the federal government that pertains to them.
The companion Senate Bill (SB2171) passed in the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 24th, and has been referred to the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee.
About the Author: Paula Gomes is a Tennessee resident and reporter for The Tennessee Conservative. You can reach Paula at paula@tennesseeconservativenews.com.
