Last month, state legislators and regulatory experts joined the 2025 Vanderbilt AI Symposium for a panel discussion on state-level AI regulation. Participants included Senator James Maroney of Connecticut (14th District), Senator Jack Johnson of Tennessee (27th District), and Ben Winters, Director of AI and Privacy at the Consumer Federation of America.
At the onset of the panel, Winters urged panelists and attendees to ask what “AI regulation” truly means. “Are we talking about algorithms that are used to inform how landlords are setting rental prices,” he asked. “Are we talking about new models from big tech companies? [Or] are we talking about some basic transparency about when AI is used to evaluate you for a job or a loan?”
He argued that this ambiguity leads to the frequent mis-categorization of AI-adjacent bills – which may actually fall under categories like privacy, for example – as AI regulations.
The state senators discussed their experiences with AI Policy. Maroney has worked on a variety of AI bills in Connecticut since he began addressing data privacy in 2020. He noted the passage of two measures: a 2022 comprehensive consumer data privacy bill and a 2023 bill regulating state government use of AI. He is currently working on S.B. No. 2, which establishes various AI systems requirements, including AI education initiatives.
“It’s not AI that’s going to take your job. It’s someone who knows how to use AI that’s going to take your job,” Maroney said. “Any technological revolution over time creates more jobs than it takes away, but there is a major change, and it’s not a one-to-one skills correlation.”
Johnson, the Republican majority leader of the Tennessee State Senate, gained experience in AI regulation in 2024. He was on the front lines of getting the ELVIS Act passed through the Tennessee State Senate and signed into law by Governor Bill Lee. The ELVIS Act protected the name, image, and likeness of musicians by prohibiting people from using AI to mimic a person’s voice without their permission. Although the bill passed unanimously, there were many stakeholders’ and professionals’ opinions considered and weighed in the situation. Johnson’s remarks helped the audience get a bird’s-eye view into the process.
“It’s not something that we as legislators just kind of got into the room and closed the door and tried to figure out how to solve this complicated problem. It was brought to us by the industry. We worked with them, and there were challenges along the way,” Johnson said. “It is very gratifying when you’re able to work with the stakeholders and end up with a piece of legislation that [not only] passes unanimously but [was] signed together.”
The conversation then shifted to general state-specific trends in the world of AI regulation. Johnson talked about how state governments and representatives are best prepared to identify community and private industry-specific risks and challenges with AI technologies.
“There is going to be a role for states to play based on economic drivers in their communities [and] in their states,” Johnson said. “If private sector entities are good and doing their job, and I believe most are, they’re going to be the first [to] identify the risks and challenges. And we need to be listening to them when they come to us and say, ‘here are some of the challenges we see,’ and we should be able to act upon those.”
Winters emphasized the importance of state legislatures staying active in AI policy regulation instead of waiting for a large effort to be made at the federal level. He discussed the federal moratorium on state AI laws that was proposed and ultimately rejected by Congress, as well as concerns related to keeping pace with China in AI development. While tech companies may prefer to have fewer restrictions, Winters argued that proposed and existing AI regulations do not stifle innovation. Moreover, he does not believe the federal government is capable of passing significant AI regulations in the near-term.
“[The federal government] has not passed a comprehensive data privacy law despite trying for 30 years,” said Winters. “If that same thing goes for AI, with the assumption that ‘we’ll just do it in a year or two, [so] let’s pause all state regulation right now,’ I would bet that would not happen.”
