Fifty States, One Technology: AI Policy Across Transportation, Health, Education, and Criminal Justice

Session Submission Type: Late-Breaking Roundtable

Abstract

As states move from general artificial intelligence principles to sector-specific implementation, the notionally same technology is being governed through strikingly different institutional arrangements, shaped by diverse policy layers, subsystem images, and stakeholder dynamics. This roundtable compares state AI policy across four critical sectors: transportation, health, education, and criminal justice. Drawing on the latest research in these sectors, this roundtable will examine how states define AI governance problems, how extent of authority shapes operationalization and diffusion, and how the politics of the policy process shapes the translation of broad principles into sector-specific rules. Across these domains, panelists will discuss policy instruments commonly advanced to address AI, including disclosure, human review, testing, appeal rights, reporting, enforcement, and procurement, identifying how their design and practical reach vary. Panelists will also consider how policy ideas diffuse across states, why even superficially apparently similar rules may operate differently across institutional settings, and how comparative taxonomies and new datasets can make that variation more legible and tractable for researchers.

The discussion will be organized around four thematic questions: First, which institutions make and implement AI policy in each sector, and how does the location and structure of authority within each policy subsystem shape the ‘available’ policy choices? Next, which regulatory instruments are shared across sectors, and which respond uniquely to distinctive sectoral risks or institutional arrangements? Third, how do problem definitions, stakeholder coalitions, and political conflict, including considerations of federalism, shape which AI governance instruments gain traction within each sector? Finally, what do we know or suspect might result in these differences in policy design regarding outcomes like uneven implementation, fragmentation, and gaps in public protection? The four panelists will bring the latest knowledge from their sectoral expertise and novel datasets to shed light on these and other urgent issues, with time reserved for participants and the audience to compare and contrast and identify priorities for cross-sector research.

Policy Area

• Innovations in Science and Technology

Moderator

• Daniel S. Schiff, Purdue University

Organizer

• Daniel S. Schiff, Purdue University

Speakers

• Melina Moe, Rutgers University

• Pedro Robles, Pennsylvania State University

• Fatima Tuz Zahra, University of Tennessee at Knoxville

• Kaylyn Jackson Schiff, Purdue University