State Senator Michael Moore discusses state legislation on artificial intelligence and data privacy
Moore chairs the Joint Committee on Advanced Information Technology, the Internet, and Cybersecurity
Photo provided by the Office of Massachusetts State Senator
Since 2009, Michael Moore has represented Massachusetts’s Second Worcester District in the State Senate. Senator Moore has spent 40 years in public service, first working as an environmental police officer, then as a selectman for his town, and finally as a state senator. He is the chair of the Joint Committee on Advanced Information Technology, the Internet, and Cybersecurity and serves on the state’s Artificial Intelligence Strategic Task Force.
In recent years, Massachusetts has increasingly emphasized AI development. On May 6, Governor Maura Healey announced a $31 million investment in the state’s AI hub. Most recently, Senator Moore has introduced legislation to enact a data privacy act, protect elections from AI-generated “deepfakes,” and limit grocery stores’ usage of biometric data, among others.
On May 1, The Tech spoke with Senator Moore about state technology policy over Zoom.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Tech: How did you become interested in technology policy?
Moore: This is my third year on the committee. I became interested in this issue roughly eight years ago, when technology really started to evolve again. I made a recommendation to the Senate president at the time that we create a task force to study cybersecurity and its implications on the state government and private sector. So he created a task force, which I chaired.
We issued a report, and one of our recommendations was to create a Joint Standing Committee between the House and the Senate to handle cybersecurity policy issues, so the committee was created. Three years ago, I was given the opportunity to chair the committee. When the assignment came out, AI was just starting to explode. So all our focus went from cybersecurity to artificial intelligence.
TT: What are the issues you see facing AI and its regulation in Massachusetts right now?
Moore: The AI Task Force is divided up into subgroups dealing with AI in medicine, financial technology, or climate technology. I ended up getting assigned to the fintech group. We have technology clusters such as Cambridge and Boston, and growing areas in Worcester. We want to know how we can further develop these clusters and incentivize more research, or incentivize investors and entrepreneurs investing in these clusters.
Part of our focus revolves around having the proper guardrails in place — not to hinder AI, but to make sure that the research is not going in areas that could have negative implications on society.
In some areas of AI, a lot of energy resources are required. One concern is that we need to invest in the electrical grid and energy resources, so that wherever these clusters are, they have the resources to flourish. Then, we have to ask: How do we create tax incentives to try to enhance investment?
Another area that we looked at in the task force was education. Do we have the appropriate resources in our K-12 school system — or even the higher education system — to really keep the evolution of this technology going? We all agreed that we need more technological curriculum in our K-12 schools, but we didn’t have the professionals or the teaching staff. We looked at investing in a way that’s going to create more professors who have the skills to teach these techniques and identify different areas of investment to keep Massachusetts as one of the leaders in these types of technology.
TT: Are there any other states that you’re looking towards as models?
Moore: Within the task force, everyone always looks to San Francisco and Silicon Valley: that’s the cluster and the model that we want to develop. For the life sciences, we want to look at North Carolina. That’s where there’s a lot of tax incentives that have been created to try to attract entrepreneurs or businesses.
Right now, with the establishment of the AI Task Force, I think we may be more on the cutting edge in trying to look at different areas where we can create these new industries. Climate tech and fintech are areas that we can try to further develop to become the model that other states look at.
TT: Massachusetts has a strong network of universities. With the recent federal funding landscape, do you think that the state would be willing or able to step in?
Moore: I think the willingness would be there; the problem is the ability to step in, because we have such an impact of cuts, even now, moving outside of the sector of AI or cyber. Looking at just the cuts to the National Institute of Health , the only state medical school (UMass Chan Medical School) is in Worcester, which has a university component to it. They’re looking at possibly $50 million in budget cuts. They’ve already laid off 200 employees. There could be many hundreds more.
If these cuts go through, our capacity to handle everything — to sustain the level of investment we want — may really be in jeopardy. The federal government is looking at an $880 billion cut to Medicaid. Well, that national cut could equate to anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion to $2 billion of cuts here in Massachusetts. So the question now becomes, do we cut services to compensate? Or do we increase taxes or find new sources of revenue?
But the issue with that arises if we’re going into a recession. If we’re looking at all the tariffs that are taking effect, I think that there’s not too many people now who don’t think we’re heading into one. The GDP just shrunk the other day, and they had the economic reports come out. If we’re trying to deal with a recession — compounded with budget cuts — we either have to raise more revenue or cut services. If we’re going to put the pressure on the tax base by raising revenue, that could lengthen the potential recession.
TT: How do you grapple with the tension between privacy and innovation?
Moore: We have some preemption by federal law that governs some aspects of data privacy, but we don’t have a comprehensive regulatory system set up. I think, in general, everyone would agree that that is the ultimate system we should have, because it’s hard to have 50 states with 50 different regulatory systems or requirements.
But for the data privacy bill that we proposed, we looked at a version that came out of a bipartisan committee two years ago. If there was a national effort to fit the needs of the industry — that is, consistency — we would be consistent with that. We also looked at the states of California, Maryland, and Connecticut, which passed similar regulations.
So, we tried to put together a piece of legislation that I think was very strong in protection for consumers, while also not being too much of a burden to industry, because every component of this is being implemented in another state. We’re trying to balance what the industry is telling us with what we’re seeing in other states’ implementations. It’s similar to doing research: when you look at best practices, you’re going to look at other research studies and see what resulted in a positive effect in your analysis.
We don’t want to stifle the economy, but we need to make sure that it’s not creating any risk to the individual constituents that we have in the state.
TT: At any point, have you tried to regulate something that changed very quickly? Have there been any changes that really surprised you?
Moore: I will say that, right now, Massachusetts and a lot of states are behind. We haven’t had a situation yet where we’ve had to change a regulation because the technology is moving too quickly. But there’s a difference between statute and legislation.
In a bill, we can establish or give the authority to a state agency to create regulations — now, regulation can be changed very quickly. The agency that’s establishing the regulation can issue an emergency order or establish emergency regulations. All they need to do is have public hearings.
For legislation or a statute, there are many bills that have been filed then passed. If they need an update, it may take 10 or 20 years for them to get changed again. That’s the important thing when dealing with technology: passing statutes that establish the framework, but enabling the governing authority to establish regulations.
If you look at the comprehensive cybersecurity bill that we filed that governs cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, we established regulatory and oversight boards and gave them regulatory authority. We have members of the private sector and government on each oversight board so we get input from both sides on what is proper regarding guardrails and regulations.
When we had hearings eight years ago, every industry that came in told us that they had certain platforms, and we needed to protect personal information. So you couldn’t say, “Okay, we’re going to have a standard platform across the board.” That was one of the reasons why we said, “Look, let’s have different industries as stakeholders and as part of the regulatory board.” This way, the industry can tell us, “These are the basic standards.” We need regulatory protections, but they should be geared towards each individual sector.
We were trying to give flexibility so we wouldn’t catch ourselves in a situation where technology was evolving too fast. But we do know it is going to evolve, so our regulations need the ability to change or evolve with it.
TT: A lot of students at MIT and around Massachusetts are very interested in AI. As a legislator, is there anything that you would want to tell them as they pursue this interest?
Moore: First, I would ask that they stay here in Massachusetts. I think we have an infrastructure and workforce that is more educated than other areas. With this educated workforce, more research and investment opportunities are going to come. Through the AI Task Force, there’s $100 million of potential funding. So I would say, if they’re looking at starting their own lab, they can reach out to the state to find out the investment opportunities that exist for grants or research, and maybe reach out to other schools or industries that have these capacities here.
I think you’ll see more opportunities for state or federal funding in the future. What’s going on federally is hopefully just a blip in time. It’s going to seem like a long time to us, but, ideally, it’s going to be short. With any luck, we’ll start to see some more research jobs and funding opportunities that will evolve and come back.