New York wants to go bigger on AI regulation — before its first law even takes effect

New York has been "among the most aggressive states in the country" at policing artificial intelligence, which sounds flattering until you clock the competition. It has already passed "pioneering legislation", and now Gov. Kathy Hochul and key policymakers want to go bigger — before the first law has even taken effect. That isn't regulation, it's a hobby with a press office. Credit where it's due, though: New York has managed to legislate twice about a technology it cannot yet measure, audit, or switch off.

The stated reason is the reliable one: with the Trump administration declining to act, the states must "fill the void". Fill it with what, exactly? Maura Healey delivered much the same speech in Massachusetts, and OpenAI's political strategist Chris Lehane has already christened the whole scramble "reverse federalism" — a phrase engineered to sound like a constitutional crisis rather than a sales strategy. Fifty statehouses, fifty rulebooks, and a lab with lobbyists in every capital is not the industry's nightmare; it's a subscription service.

And note the timing: bigger, before anything has taken effect. Nobody, including the people drafting it, can say whether the first law does anything at all, because it hasn't started doing it yet. So the only measurable output of this push is enthusiasm — Hochul and her policymakers being photographed looking tough on AI while the void remains, on current evidence, roughly the shape of a void. Waiting twelve months to see whether statute number one actually worked would be the dull, obvious, evidence-based option, which is precisely why nobody is proposing it. Somewhere a compliance lawyer is already billing hourly for a rule that doesn't exist yet, at a firm that will invoice twice.