Maryland Gov. Wes Moore outlines safety and regulatory guidelines for AI - CBS News

Oh good, Maryland has a plan, and the plan is a list of adjectives. Gov. Wes Moore's office announced that the state's AI safety policies 'will be guided by three principles' — protecting citizens' rights, safety and democracy — which is the regulatory equivalent of a bumper sticker. Note the verb: guided. Nobody is fined, bound, audited or, heaven forfend, inconvenienced. Guidance is what you offer a canoe. Rights, safety and democracy, in that order, which quietly tells you which one gets the smallest budget.

Then there's the labour half, and it's a beauty: workers 'deserve a voice in how AI impacts workers,' so the administration will create a standing labour-management committee to work with unions on the state workforce. Standing. It will stand for ages, presumably in a room with a whiteboard and a very patient agenda. Unions will be consulted, and consulted is not the same as obeyed, though it does generate lovely minutes. Meanwhile the actual AI tools already humming through state agencies will keep humming on whatever timetable the vendor's account manager fancies, because committees do not ship software and procurement does not wait for the minutes to be ratified.

And for the schoolchildren, legislators 'will work with' the Department of Education on protocols for the AI tools students interact with at school — a sentence written entirely in the future tense, which is where all the safest promises live. It is a refreshing contrast to Sen. Dave McCormick's preference that Washington keep its hands off the wheel entirely. Maryland has gallantly volunteered to grip the wheel. Whether the wheel is attached to anything, or whether the state has merely entered into a long-term relationship with the word 'will', remains a matter for a future standing committee.