Within decades, there will be more humanoid robots in this country than there are people. Are you comfortable with one of them raising your kids? With one of them in your daughter’s bedroom? With your son forming his first idea of intimacy with a machine designed to never say no?
These are not hypothetical questions. You will vote on them in the next five years. The bills are already being drafted by people who are not waiting for you to catch up.
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The runway is shorter than legislators often think. Most state legislative sessions are wrapping up now. Drafting and pre-filing for the next session is already underway in many states. And artificial intelligence has advanced more in the last three months than it did in the prior two years. The states are already behind.
AI IS EVERYWHERE. NOBODY IS TEACHING US HOW TO USE IT
There will not be one AI bill next session. There will be thousands. Infrastructure is AI. Healthcare is AI. Education is AI. Fraud is AI. Elections are AI. The technology is now the substrate underneath every policy domain we legislate, and pretending otherwise will not slow it down.
I do not say so as a critic. I work with legislators, lobbyists, and the press across America every week, teaching, briefing, and meeting with the people who make these decisions. The fluency is not there yet — not in most rooms, not at the depth this moment requires. The people writing bills today are mostly on defense, waiting for the consequences to materialize before adjusting the law, instead of getting in front of the technology while the design choices are still being made.
Drafting a bill used to take a lawyer, weeks of work, and a small army of staff to find model legislation, pull comparable statutes from other states, and turn the policy intent into clean statutory language. That bottleneck is gone.
The data is already showing it. Between Jan. 1 and April 30, tens of thousands of bills were filed across all 50 states and at the federal level. That count is conservative. Add AI on top, and 2027 is going to be the highest-volume legislative year on record by a multiple.
At the same time, a digital divide between the people drafting bills and the people voting on them is functionally emerging as a transfer of power to corporations, the largest firms, and whoever can afford the tools and the talent to use them well. A legislator who is not fluent in AI cannot tell when a lobbyist or a witness is misrepresenting what an AI system actually does. They cannot tell when a vendor is overstating capability to win a contract. They cannot tell when an industry advocate is downplaying risk to kill a bill.
The fluency gap is not a character flaw. It is a training and time problem, and it is solvable. But it has to be solved fast, because the people who would benefit from a less-informed legislature are also adopting these tools, and they are not waiting. AI security matters, but fluency matters first. AI is here to stay, and the legislators who do not learn how to use it will not be able to govern the rest of us.
For legislators, the marching orders are simple: Learn the technology at a working level, not a press-conference level. Use the tools. Pay for the paid versions so your data isn’t training the next model. Have your staff brief you on what your agencies are actually using, and stop drafting bills on defense.
YOUTUBE LAUNCHES NEW DEEPFAKE AI-DETECTION TOOL FOR GOVERNMENT AND JOURNALISTS
The same logic applies to all Americans. Get involved in AI policy. Decide what matters for the future and start showing up where those decisions are being made. Start associations. Fund nonprofits. Build the education services that can help the public navigate what is coming. The institutions that will guide the next decade are being founded right now. Be one of the people founding them. Learn AI.
From legislators to concerned citizens, AI will wait for none of us. Get in the room, get fluent, and get to work.
Laura Davis is the co-founder of USLege, a venture-backed AI startup, and host of the Bills & Business podcast. Find her at lauraluisedavis.com.
