Source: Fortune
Summary
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna warned that the US needs to find a “Goldilocks middle” in AI regulation, balancing too many and too few rules. The current regulatory landscape is fragmented, with states introducing over 1,200 AI-related bills in 2025, and the federal government proposing conflicting policies. A three-stage test is proposed to evaluate AI policy: (1) specificity, (2) cost-benefit analysis, and (3) design tests. The framework aims to ensure that proposed rules effectively address gaps in existing law and consider tradeoffs between regulation and competitiveness.
Our Reading
The strategy enters a familiar phase.
The US is betting on AI regulation without a clear strategy, while the EU, China, and Singapore have established their own approaches. The proposed framework offers a structured method for evaluating AI policy, but its application is uncertain. The debate is stuck between sweeping regulation and unrestricted operation, with little attention to how proposals might conflict with existing law. The framework’s success depends on its ability to cut through the noise and provide a clear verdict on live proposals.
The framework’s purpose is not to resolve the tradeoff in the abstract but to make it explicit for each specific proposal. The three-stage test forces the debate to consider tradeoffs that current legislative drafting frequently ignores. A bill that scores well on harm reduction can still fail on innovation environment or competitive concentration. The framework points toward an affirmative substantive agenda, but its adoption is uncertain.
The legislative volume is high, but a shared test for distinguishing good policy from bad has been absent from the debate. The framework will not, on its own, resolve any specific dispute. Its purpose is to ensure that the questions before state legislators, members of Congress, and federal agencies are the right questions, asked in the right order.
The stakes extend beyond domestic compliance, positioning the US against EU regulators, Chinese capability development, and frontier models with national-security implications. The renowned Federalist Papers concluded that a stronger federal government was necessary to manage national and international issues while preserving state powers.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Author: Evan Null
