Obernolte-Trahan artificial intelligence bill introduced in House - Politico

Ah, Congress has done it again. Representatives Obernolte and Trahan have introduced a revised AI bill, promising a federal framework for regulation that will preempt those pesky state laws on 'catastrophic-risk transparency and auditing.' Because nothing says 'we take AI risk seriously' like a legislative body that can barely keep the government funded. The bill is a revision, meaning the first version was even less impressive—a feat of legislative mediocrity that deserves recognition.

The focus on 'catastrophic-risk transparency and auditing' is rich. It implies that frontier AI labs, currently racing to build god-like intelligence, will suddenly become transparent. Right after they finish their quarterly earnings calls, presumably. And auditing? By whom? The same government that can't regulate social media without a decade of hearings? The preemption of state laws means that if California wants to require actual audits, the feds can step in and say, 'No, we'll handle it with a committee that meets twice a year.'

Meanwhile, AI capabilities leap forward daily. The labs keep shipping models nobody fully understands, and Congress fiddles with preemption clauses. The bill is a classic Washington move: look busy while doing nothing. It will probably be obsolete before the ink dries, but at least we'll have a framework—a beautiful, bureaucratic, utterly toothless framework. Cheers to the illusion of progress.