Love it or hate it, the AI moratorium will be back

The moratorium first appeared in the megabill on a Sunday night in May in text released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. That text imposed the moratorium as part of an upgrade of IT at the Commerce Department.

Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute, said he floated the idea in a 2024 position paper. He drew on 1998’s Internet Tax Freedom Act, which barred state and local taxes on internet transactions.

Thierer, in an interview, said he didn’t author any of the language under consideration by Congress but praised it as “an ambitious approach” that “would constitute a major moment in American technology policy” to prevent a patchwork of state laws…

In a post on Medium, Thierer of R Street said the moratorium’s defeat “will hobble the ability of our citizenry to enjoy the fruits of the computational revolution and our nation’s ability to compete internationally against determined adversaries.”