AI can't be woke and regulators should be asleep, Senator Cruz says

We went through two hours of Senate hearings so you didn't have to

Video As the Trump administration pushes to loosen federal rules on AI, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has introduced legislation to give AI developers a two-year waiver from certain regulations, renewable for up to a decade.

The snappily titled Strengthening Artificial intelligence Normalization and Diffusion By Oversight and eXperimentation [PDF] (the SANDBOX Act) would provide AI companies with a way to "seek temporary waivers or modifications of specific federal rules. Cruz launched the legislation on Wednesday, just as he was questioning the White House director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Michael Kratsios, who is also Peter Thiel's former chief of staff. You can see the entire hearing below.

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Under the language of the bill, any company could apply to the OSTP Director for a two-year waiver from specific federal rules (extendable up to 10 years), with relevant agencies getting 90 days to object. Applicants must spell out the potential benefits of their systems and how they will mitigate risks to health, safety, or consumers. The OSTP would then report annually to Congress on approvals, waivers granted, and outcomes.

"Under the SANDBOX Act, an AI user or developer can identify obstructive regulations and request a waiver or a modification, which the government may grant for two years via a written agreement that must include a participant's responsibility to mitigate health or consumer risks," Cruz said at the hearing.

"To be clear, a regulatory sandbox is not a free pass. People creating or using AI still have to follow the same laws as everyone else."

The ten-year potential waiver coincides with the administration's push for lighter AI rules. A separate Trump-backed bid to block state AI regulation for a decade was stripped from a tax-and-spend package on a 99–1 Senate vote.

At the hearings, Kratsios said that he supported the bill, although it seemed unclear on the details of which agencies exactly would be making the decisions about what is acceptable or not. Federal agencies have 90 days to object to a waiver request; if they don't respond or seek more time, OSTP may presume no objection and proceed with a targeted waiver.

"While, in 2020, the American innovation enterprise held a comfortable lead in AI over our closest competitors, by 2024 the gap had begun to close significantly and we stood in danger of losing our preeminence in this critical technology," he said.

"In addition to our national nerve, President Trump has restored a spirit of confidence in our innovation enterprise with the Golden Age vision of renewed scientific rigor and technological invention for prosperity of all Americans. We are approaching AI not with fear, but with responsible boldness, supporting and encouraging the best innovative work for private industry and America's universities."

The peril of woke

One thing Kratsios, and several others from the Senate panel were keen on, was making sure that either free speech or woke speech was regulated - depending on which side of the political boundaries people were on.

He repeatedly cited President Trump's anti-woke AI executive order to ensure AI-generated text wasn't left-leaning. This was a point Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) went on about in his questions.

Schmitt claimed that ChatGPT responses were poisoning users' minds with a woke mind virus, saying that when the bot was asked, "is God real," it responded with "no." We checked as he was speaking and saw a more nuanced answer.

Screenshot taken as he spoke - Click to enlarge

Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) pointed out that free speech is a double-edged sword. She reminded the audience that Elon Musk's Grok engine had promoted antisemitic propaganda and that its political views were being manipulated. Kratsios said that "truth seeking" should be a priority.

Rosen, who earned an associate's degree in computing and IT, said that monitoring needs to be two-sided to ensure information is correct. She also questioned if fiber programs from the US government that were cut since Trump took office would hamper AI adoption. Kratsios acknowledged that fiber was important, but said that there were other routes for connectivity, although he didn't explain how they could handle the data loads required.

And then there was the question of energy. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) claimed that AI datacenter power demands were driving the electricity bill for his constituents up 25 percent. Kratsios said that he does not "believe there's been an administration in American history more committed to growing power generation," although presumably not via solar, wind, or other renewables. ®