Exclusive: Sens. Hawley, Murphy push AI liability as Trump backs self-regulation - Axios
Oh my goodness, buckle up, because Capitol Hill has discovered *collaboration* and it is adorable! ✨ Axios reports — exclusively, no less — that Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) are *planning* to introduce AI liability legislation. Planning! Not drafting, not filing, not voting — planning, which is the purest, most unspoiled stage of any bill, the stage where it can still be anything. It's like a seedling. It's like a vision board. And visions are free! ✨
Now some people will point out that the legislation does not exist yet, and to those people we say: what a *gift* of open space! An unwritten bill is a bill with zero unintended consequences, zero carve-outs written by lobbyists at 2am, and zero amendments that quietly delete the word 'safety.' Meanwhile the headline reminds us Trump backs self-regulation — the most trusting arrangement imaginable, in which the companies get to decide whether the companies behaved, exactly like book clubs and bake-offs and every other institution we truly cherish. Nobody has been held liable yet, which means nobody has been held liable *unfairly*: a perfect record, maintained entirely by not starting. ✨
And the bipartisanship! A Missouri Republican and a Connecticut Democrat, standing shoulder to shoulder, agreeing that liability is a thing that could theoretically be assigned to someone. Bipartisan efforts to regulate the technology 'persist' on Capitol Hill, per Axios — *persist*, like a houseplant nobody has watered in eighteen months that is somehow still green. Somewhere out there is the liability piece we got very excited about in October, and now here comes another one, planning its arrival! The intentions are arriving right on schedule. Liability, self-regulation, hearings — all of it eventually, which is the best kind of all of it. ✨