Right-to-Compute Laws Are Spreading Across the US, as Electricity Bills Skyrocket (AI bros & ALEC w/pro-AI state laws)

[highplainsdem]

https://gizmodo.com/right-to-compute-laws-are-spreading-across-the-us-as-electricity-bills-skyrocket-2000716730

Laws designed to make it harder to regulate AI and computing technology are quietly starting to spread through state legislatures. Conveniently, these so-called right-to-compute laws are emerging just as some of the world’s biggest corporations race to build massive new data centers.

Montana became the first state to pass such a law back in April. But as the AI and enterprise news outlet VKTR has pointed out, lawmakers in other states are also considering similar bills, including in New Hampshire, Ohio, and South Dakota. Meanwhile, a similar measure in Idaho failed to move beyond the committee stage.

“Government actions that restrict the ability to privately own or make use of computational resources for lawful purposes, which infringes on citizens’ fundamental rights to property and free expression, must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest,” the Montana law reads.

The bill goes on to broadly define “computational resources” as covering “any tools, technologies, systems, or infrastructure, whether digital, analog, existing, or some other form” that facilitate computation, data processing, or storage.

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The Montana bill defines computational resources as "any tools, technologies, systems, or infrastructure, whether digital, analog, existing, or some other form." That definition includes data centers without naming them specifically.

If you're wondering who might be helping with getting state legislatures to pass pro-AI bills, it's apparently our old nemesis ALEC, the pro-corporate RW American Legislative Exchange Council. Gizmodo links to ALEC's Right To Compute Act: https://alec.org/model-policy/right-to-compute-act/

If you aren't familiar with ALEC, here's a link to my 2011 thread with hundreds of replies, explaining what ALEC is and what it was up to then:

ALEC: Bringing the vast rightwing corporate conspiracy to a legislature near you
https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=439&topic_id=591230

ALEC likes to fly under media radar, quietly getting cookie-cutter pro-corporate RW legislation passed in as many states as possible.

And that works well for the AI bros, who can now try to keep states and cities from fighting harmful data centers by lobbying for a "right to compute."