David Crowley proposes AI safety policies for youth, seniors - WPR

David Crowley, a Wisconsin politician with opinions and a word processor, has proposed three AI safety policies aimed at youth and seniors. Companies would be barred from using personal data to target people with ads; companies that allow scam ads would be penalised; and families could sue over harms to children linked to 'tech programmes or features.' That is the entire offer: three bullets and a press release. And note the load-bearing word — 'features' — which will happily stretch to cover any piece of software the largest legal department in the room would rather it did not.

We have seen this film, and California already released it — Adam's Law handed chatbot makers a compliance list and everybody got a photo opportunity. Now Wisconsin would like its turn. Then arrives the line Crowley offers as confession and everyone else recognises as the operating manual: 'We know AI is developing far faster than our government is legislating.' True three years ago, true today, and it will be true on the day the next three model versions ship, because one of those activities runs on quarterly sprints and the other on biennial sessions. That is not a scandal anyone is going to fix; it is the pace the industry was built around.

Consider what the advertising measure leaves alone: not the collection of your personal data, not the selling of it, not the breach that spills it — merely the targeting, which is the part voters can actually see. Fining companies that allow scam ads is the same manoeuvre in a different costume; the scam-ad trade has long since priced the fine in, next to the server bill and the coffee. The headline also promises seniors, who appear to be covered by a promise that someone, eventually, will be penalised. Families suing over harms to children will meet causation, standing and a definition of 'features' written by whichever side has more lawyers. Proposals are free. Bills are not.