Is this bill worth signing? Transparency gutted from Colorado’s big AI package

Colorado legislators yesterday passed one of the nation’s first laws to regulate the use of artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, the bill lost nearly all of its meaningful transparency protections along the way.

We've been monitoring SB24-205, the Consumer Protections for Artificial Intelligence Act, which requires developers of high-risk AI systems to use reasonable care to avoid algorithmic discrimination.

The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Robert Rodriguez (D-Denver), originally contained appropriate transparency clauses requiring AI developers to maintain documentation about each system. That documentation included information that would enable system deployers to understand the capabilities and limitations of the AI model. The bill also required a description of the data used to train the model, and disclosure of the use of synthetic data.

In the final version of the bill all of those clauses have been excised. There is no training data disclosure requirement.

A marked-up version of SB24-205 reveals the damage. The screenshot below contains the struck language that did not survive to the bill’s final passage.

Transparency requirements for AI training data were included in the original bill, but deleted as the bill neared approval.

SYNTHETIC DATA DISCLOSURES WERE ALSO ELIMINATED

The original requirement to disclose the use of synthetic training data was eliminated in the final bill. The struck language in the screenshot below was in the original bill. In its place entered a much softer disclosure that doesn’t mention synthetic data at all.

 enforcement was watered down, too 

Later in the bill, language intended to insulate AI developers and deployers from violations of the new Act was substantially broadened.

Originally the bill let developers and deployers off the hook, in part, if they took specified measures to discover and correct violations of the Act.

In the revised version, the phrase “and correct” has been deleted. In other words: Developers of an AI system in violation of the Act only need to become aware of the violations and alert authorities to their discovery—not to correct them.

 The watered-down version of the Act also significantly narrows its enforcement. Originally, enforcement powers were exclusively given to the state attorney general “and district attorneys.” There are 22 district attorneys in Colorado, but only one attorney general. The final version of the Act strikes the district attorneys entirely, reducing the potential enforcers of the Act from 23 to one.

Bill now sits on Gov. Polis’ desk

The fate of Colorado’s AI bill illustrates the lobbying power that AI’s major players are using to eliminate transparency requirements in this first national wave of AI-related state legislation.

SB24-205 now sits on the desk of Gov. Jared Polis, who must decide whether to sign the bill into law, allow it to become law without his signature, or veto it and hold out for a stronger package of AI guardrails.