As Gov. DeSantis’ Florida explores AI checks, Donald Trump promises preemption

President Donald Trump is poised to set federal guidance for artificial intelligence that could preclude regulations that states like Florida and Governors like Ron DeSantis might want to enact.

“There must be only One Rulebook if we are going to continue to lead in AI. We are beating ALL COUNTRIES at this point in the race, but that won’t last long if we are going to have 50 States, many of them bad actors, involved in RULES and the APPROVAL PROCESS,” Trump posted to Truth Social.

“THERE CAN BE NO DOUBT ABOUT THIS! AI WILL BE DESTROYED IN ITS INFANCY! I will be doing a ONE RULE Executive Order this week. You can’t expect a company to get 50 Approvals every time they want to do something. THAT WILL NEVER WORK.”

The President’s comments come as the Florida House prepares to begin a week of committee meetings addressing AI, and after DeSantis has spent months fretting about the impacts of the technological inevitability and teasing statewide regulations to address it.

The House is holding meetings starting Tuesday revolving around what Speaker Daniel Perez calls “the potentially positive and negative impacts of the use of AI in their respective jurisdictions.”

The House Economic Infrastructure Subcommittee will tackle utility costs related to data centers. The House Careers & Workforce Subcommittee plans to explore “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work: Opportunities, Challenges, and Workforce Readiness.” And the House Information Technology Budget & Policy Subcommittee will examine “Examples of artificial intelligence use in state agencies and options for the future.”

Meanwhile, DeSantis is prioritizing a so-called “AI Bill of Rights” that is designed to counter what he calls an “age of darkness and deceit.”

Exploitative depictions concern the Governor. He said he wants the law to “do things like fortify some of the protections we have in place for things like deepfakes and use of explicit material, particularly those that depict minors.”

Foreign control also worries him.

DeSantis vows not to “allow any state or local government agency to utilize Chinese-created AI tools when they’re doing data here in the state of Florida.”

Other proposed protections include ensuring “that data inputted into AI is secure and private.”

Additionally, people dealing with insurance companies may have recourse against claims being determined by AI rather than humans, and lawyers’ clients could be protected from the technology being used to write briefs and filings.

DeSantis also wants the legislation to rein in data centers by capping utility rates that could be driven up by them, banning subsidies to build them, prohibiting them in agriculturally-zoned areas, issuing statewide noise regulations, and embracing the oft-trampled concept of home rule to allow local jurisdictions to ban them.

He also expects emergent legislation to “provide more parental rights … to ensure parents can access conversations their child has with one of these LLM (large language model) chatbots. Parents will be able to set parameters from when the child can access any of these platforms, and there will be notifications for parents required if the child exhibits concerning behavior.”

DeSantis has decried overstretched stock market valuations for “Mag 7” companies Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla, all of which are in the AI space. He has also suggested the “Founding Fathers” would hate the technology, and argued it will be used to perpetuate fraud.

Despite these qualms, Trump will move forward.