American Artificial Intelligence Leadership and Uniformity Act
H.R. 5388, the American Artificial Intelligence Leadership and Uniformity Act, would establish a national framework to sustain U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence and require an actionable national AI plan within 30 days of enactment, with annual updates. The bill aims to reduce a patchwork of state AI rules by imposing a five-year federal moratorium that preempts state and local laws restricting AI models, systems, or automated decision systems involved in interstate commerce. It also directs federal agencies to align risk management with nationally recognized standards (notably those from NIST), improve infrastructure and security related to AI, and ease compliance burdens—especially for small businesses—while ensuring a clear scope to avoid unnecessary litigation. The measure would require ongoing interagency coordination, review of executive actions, and assessment of conflicting state laws, with the possibility of extending or refining the preemption scope in Congress.
Key Points
- 1National AI Action Plan required within 30 days of enactment and updates every year thereafter; plan must identify barriers to innovation, set measurable goals, align risk management with recognized standards (e.g., NIST), bolster critical infrastructure and security, improve access to foundation models and data, and include metrics and interagency coordination.
- 2Annual updates and reporting on implementation; review of existing executive actions related to AI, with authority to suspend, revise, or rescind actions that conflict with the policy, where permissible by law.
- 3State law preemption; temporary moratorium for five years on state or local laws that limit or regulate AI models, systems, or automated decision systems engaged in interstate commerce; includes specific carve-outs to preserve laws that facilitate deployment, licensing, or that do not impose substantive AI-specific requirements beyond federal law, while generally prohibiting criminal penalties under state rules during the moratorium.
- 4Scope and construction: the act clarifies definitions of AI, AI model, AI system, and automated decision system; it also states that federal action should be precise in its preemption to avoid ambiguity and litigation, and that generally applicable criminal laws remain unaffected.
- 5General rules of construction: the act does not authorize new federal substantive design or performance requirements beyond existing authorities, and it does not preempt generally applicable criminal or other non-AI-specific laws; procurement provisions at the state level may proceed as long as they don’t effectively regulate AI beyond federal authority.