Opinion: America needs a consistent national approach to AI regulation

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/06/11/opinion-us-ai-regulation-illinois/

Publish Date: 2026-06-11 06:12:00

On May 27, the Illinois House passed legislation, SB315, which would require frontier artificial intelligence companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic to create, publish and annually update internal policy frameworks to ensure that the AI models they build are safe and avoid severe or catastrophic risks. Importantly, the bill also mandates that the frameworks developed by AI companies be audited annually by an independent third party to ensure compliance with the requirements in the bill — a first for AI legislation anywhere in the country.

This may be good in theory, but there’s a major problem: No infrastructure currently exists, in Illinois or anywhere else, to credibly and reliably conduct the type of independent audits required under the legislation. There are no licensing requirements, no certification criteria and no broadly recognized oversight standards for third parties to perform AI compliance audits. Without a clear and trusted evaluation framework, the required third-party audits would create inconsistent and even meaningless evaluations, along with enormous uncertainty among AI companies, rather than enhancing consumer protection and AI safety.

More fundamentally, SB315 is the latest example of why America needs consistent national guardrails to govern the development of AI. Indeed, in an interview with NBC News, the bill’s lead sponsor in the Illinois House, Democratic Rep. Daniel Didech, stated: “The states shouldn’t be doing this. The best way to regulate these types of catastrophic risks would be a federal approach.”

He’s exactly right. A complex patchwork of 50 competing and inconsistent state frameworks of conflicting definitions, limitations and requirements is not only immensely difficult for AI developers and businesses using AI to navigate; it’s also a recipe for mass confusion, compliance errors and regulatory opportunism — all of which is inherently dangerous.

According to MultiState, which tracks state and local AI…

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