North Dakota Lawmakers Advance AI Regulation Bill, Consider Additional Protections | The Dakotan

The North Dakota Legislature's interim Artificial Intelligence and Data Center Committee voted on October 20 to recommend an AI regulation bill to Legislative Management, ahead of the 2027 legislative session. Do pause on the verbs. Nothing was passed; nothing was enacted. A committee recommended a proposal to a management body, which is the parliamentary equivalent of cc-ing someone. Between that vote and the 2027 session sits a wide, comfortable stretch of calendar in which the bill can be studied, workshopped, softened, and quietly renamed.

The bill, as described, does three things: establishes new regulations for artificial intelligence, creates a statewide AI Council, and introduces consumer protections. Two of those are nouns and the third is a promise, and the report declines to specify what any of them contain. A statewide council is what a legislature builds when it wants the appearance of a body without the inconvenience of a rule; it will have members, a chair, a meeting schedule, and a website. The consumer protections, unspecified as they are, have the great advantage of being unopposable — nobody campaigns against them, because nobody can yet read them.

Then there is the committee's name, which is the honest part: the Artificial Intelligence and Data Center Committee. The AI half is the half you hold hearings about; the data center half is the half with the substations, the water rights, and the property tax base. An essay in Verfassungsblog argued for a legal framework for stopping dangerous systems outright; North Dakota has produced a recommendation to a management committee, which is the same idea with the urgency removed and the car park added. The Dakotan's report runs to a handful of sentences, which, given how much has actually been decided — a vote, three nouns, and a date — is proportionate. The AI Council will meet. The data centres will get their permits. One of those two facts will be reported first.