For the second time in a little more than a year, a group of technology companies and consumer advocates will meet and try to land what has become the Colorado legislature’s white whale: a consensus on regulating artificial intelligence.
Convened by Gov. Jared Polis, the working group will seek to rewrite the state’s much-maligned — and still dormant — AI regulations, which generally seek to prevent discrimination by AI that’s used in hiring or lending decisions.
AI companies and the agencies that use their technology have said Colorado’s existing regulations are both too burdensome and would stifle the industry in the state. Consumer advocacy groups have also previously criticized the rules as not doing enough.
The group’s creation comes weeks after a contentious special session ended without a negotiated settlement to the now 18-month-old AI conflict. Instead, lawmakers reached an acrimonious armistice, voting to delay the implementation of those regulations until next summer.
In the process, they set up a third consecutive legislative session of AI debate and — maybe — provided a brief window for negotiations to find a path forward.
“It’s about what our state AI policy should look like. And that’s why we’ve really pulled together some of the best thinkers, consumer advocates, startups and innovators — to really talk together about how consumers can have protections and we can support innovation,” Polis said in an interview Tuesday.
The working group, which will meet for the first time Thursday, will include 18 members from three broad groups: developers of AI technology; agencies and companies that use AI; and labor and advocacy groups that have generally pushed for tighter AI oversight. The format is similar to one proposed in August by the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, which had sought another working group overseen by a mediator.
The prior attempts to fix the regulations, which were passed in the spring of 2024 and have been criticized since, include a task force that tried to accomplish the same revisionist task last year. Polis directed the creation of that group when he signed the regulations into law.
That task force’s efforts came to naught: In the spring, legislators euthanized a bill to rewrite the regulations amid efforts to further undercut them. That prompted a furious scramble to delay the regulations, and, when that failed, Polis tasked lawmakers with either rewriting or delaying them during the August special session.
Whether this latest attempt bears fruit remains to be seen. Polis said he preferred that states leave AI regulation to Congress, which earlier this summer contemplated prohibiting any form of state-level regulation. Failing that, Polis said he’d support “harmonizing” Colorado’s regulations with those passed elsewhere, like in California earlier this year. In his letter to working-group members, Polis encouraged them to “look beyond” the existing regulations.
Chief among the topics that the working group will have to solve is who should bear legal responsibility if an AI system is used to discriminate against a job applicant or a person seeking a loan from a bank. Loren Furman, the president and CEO of the chamber, said that would likely be the most contentious issue to unpack.
Guiding the meetings — which will not be fully open to the public — will be a facilitator who will seek to steer the group toward a consensus on the regulations. Should the group achieve elusive enlightenment, the proposal would then be presented to legislators to consider adopting into legislation.
No legislators are part of the group itself. Sen. Robert Rodriguez, the Senate’s majority leader and the lead sponsor of the AI regulations, said he was open to the working group’s efforts and approach. They’d discussed a similar proposal in the early summer, he said.
But he wouldn’t commit to accepting whatever proposal may come from the group. He said he has stressed that to the governor’s office: “Having meetings and writing policy and passing policy are different things.”
“Any time a group of people can sit together and talk is good,” Rodriguez said. Still: “I have no assumptions that this is going to solve everything, as someone who’s done this for three iterations.”
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