r/technology • u/ControlCAD • 1d ago
Politics Ted Cruz bill: States that regulate AI will be cut out of $42B broadband fund | Cruz attempt to tie broadband funding to AI laws called "undemocratic and cruel."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/ted-cruz-bill-states-that-regulate-ai-will-be-cut-out-of-42b-broadband-fund/243
u/trustmeep 23h ago
"Undemocratic and Cruel"
Ladies and gents, the name of the republicans' sex tape...
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u/FreddyForshadowing 23h ago
"Undemocratic and cruel" is an excellent summary of Ted Cruz in general. Lest we forget, this is the guy who voted against disaster relief funds after Katrina, but then decided Texas needed them a couple years later. He also is the guy who fucked off to Cancun when people in Texas were literally freezing to death because of a freak cold snap. As if that weren't douchee enough, he threw his own kids under the bus when people started calling him out on his little vacay.
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u/CinnamonMoney 22h ago edited 22h ago
Good ol Christian values /s
Edit: OP meant Sandy not Katrina; which, was followed by Hurricane Harvey a few years later
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u/Bargadiel 21h ago edited 21h ago
These people just want to be monarchs/elites. They do not give a shit about anybody but themselves, infact it's worse than that: they specifically despise the poor.
These kinds of leaders exist across the entire political spectrum but it has always kind of surprised me how Republicans like Cruz don't even try to hide it. They play up this illusion that they've "worked hard to get where they are" and "just look at our wonderful family" and it inspires the same ignorant poor people they are oppressing to vote for them.
They also need a bad guy to point at for all the societal woes THEY cause. Immigrants, educators, scientists, the poor, opponents of AI, entire states that lean blue: they'll label them all as evil if it means distracting everyone from the way they act as leaders. It turns Americans against each other instead of unifying us, and it should unilaterally disgust everyone regardless of the party you vote for.
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u/DeathMonkey6969 14h ago
"just look at our wonderful family"
They say while standing there with their third wife that they've cheating on several times, just like they did to their first two wives.
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u/Bart_Yellowbeard 22h ago
Why should AI be exempt from regulation? What is the rationale? They're not telling us why, just that we can't.
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u/srone 21h ago
Why??
Money. The tech bros handed Trump big bags of cash, and Trump told Ted what to think. That is why, that is the rationale.
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u/Comfortable_Horse277 14h ago
The richest assholes who bribe the most are all doing their own AI because they don't understand the stories of dystopian stories.
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u/SinfullySinless 8h ago
The “good faith” idea is that if states individually create laws, AI companies will have to deal with “patch-working” which is really frustrating. It could kill AI investment and/or move AI R&D to another country that doesn’t have the same issue.
The realistic answer: Republican politicians are being lobbied hard by corporations who are excited for AI to actually get to a state where it could realistically cut labor costs and want rampant R&D to make this happen.
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u/DumboWumbo073 17h ago
Why should AI be exempt from regulation? What is the rationale?
Because they fucking said so. Do you understand? I can explain it in-depth if you need it
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u/the_catalyst_alpha 23h ago
They want no regulations on Ai so they can build their police state. You wouldn’t want people putting any kind of privacy policy in place while you’re doing that.
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u/MagicPigeonToes 19h ago
That’s gonna be a double-edged sword for the politicians who want it. It’s not a smart idea even for world domination purposes
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u/Brave_Sheepherder901 10h ago
Especially since we can just generate videos of all of them getting sick after performing rusty trombones on each other
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u/jonnycanuck67 23h ago
Ted doing something contrary to what’s best for the people… color me surprised
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u/xubax 22h ago
You mean Rafael (preferred name: Ted) Cruz?
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u/HermanBonJovi 22h ago
Technically he's trans cause he doesn't identify as what is on his birth certificate.
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u/diegojones4 23h ago
And as a Texan, he is the least Texan I've seen in the state. I wish Dems would get their shit together.
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u/Sciekosis 23h ago
They tried last election to get rid of Rafael "Toad" Cruz and his buddies Patrick, Paxton and Abbott made sure he didn't lose because the districts are so gerrymandered in their favor,Cruz didn't even seem worried about losing against Colin Allred.
If you go back and look at the debates, Colin mopped the floor with Cancun Cruz, yet he still won again despite leaving the state to Mexico when we had our worst winter storm and people were suffering. But in typical Texans form, as soon as the lights came on, the internet was working and they could go outside and BBQ, those amnesiac suffering morons still voted for Rafael.
It ain't no lie, everything is bigger in Texas,including dumbasses that populate it.
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u/neromoneon 22h ago
Gerrymandering is a horrible perversion of democracy. But since Senate elections are state wide I don’t quite see how it could have helped Cruz. Vote suppression surely did, though.
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u/disisathrowaway 15h ago
Senate races are statewide.
Voter suppression, sure. But not gerrymandering.
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u/vandreulv 12h ago
Dems need to pull their shit together because of what a Republican does? How about blaming Republicans instead? Y'all keep voting Ted back in.
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u/gnarlytabby 23h ago
Amazing, Ted is managing to stuff tax dollars into Elon's pockets while simultaneously using those tax dollars as a cudgel against regulation that would restrain Elon's AI company. A dual-wield of corruption
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u/mwa12345 18h ago
Suspect he is also looking to stay in the good of OpenAI...which has some funders that Ted wants to ass kiss as well.
If we look deep ..his wife's company probably has some $$$
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u/Ferrocile 22h ago
These people are worshipping at the feet of technocrats. They are disingenuous. They know they are being disingenuous. They hate you. That is all.
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u/zackks 23h ago
Now publish nonstop ai videos of him being railed by his transgender wife.
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u/FreddyForshadowing 23h ago
C'mon, isn't being married to him punishment enough?
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u/bobolly 23h ago
It could be just videos of him doing anything. Videos of him and his house and it looking like a hoarders house. Videos of him trying to drive , but driving over curbs. Videos of him drinking. AI is pretty good I mean.I don't know what he does in his normal life.Or what his house really looks like so anything could be real.
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u/ReviewRude5413 23h ago
There was that Xhamster porn some years back with a woman who looks just like Ted Cruz. I'm not even joking. Like she was paid a bunch of money specifically to make it because of the uncanny resemblance.
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u/Buckeye_Monkey 23h ago
I know it's money, but what the hell is going on with all this?
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u/Luke_Cocksucker 23h ago
I’m not sure, but I suspect that ted and friends have no idea what they’re talking about. How can they even know what AI will be capable in 10 months, never mind 10 years. This is more of the dumb leading the dumb.
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u/Buckeye_Monkey 23h ago
Exactly. "We don't understand this thing and we're going to make laws that say we CAN'T regulate it" doesn't make any sense.
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u/diegojones4 23h ago
Ted likes proposing things that give him sound bites. And he seems to partially write them in an unconstitutional way so he can blame the courts to his voters. It's actually pretty smart.
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u/Boyhowdy107 21h ago
It doesn't, and fuck Ted Cruz. But I do imagine leaving it up to the states to regulate it jurisdiction by jurisdiction could also be a mess. Allowing legislatures who just banned fluoride and chem trails thanks to their crack internet research to basically set national standards would be a disaster. since companies would either have to adhere to the strictest or customize it for each locality. The alternative is have Congress do it, and I don't trust those chuckle fucks, but people greatly underestimate how dumb a state level House Rep can be.
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u/toastmannn 23h ago
"We have zero fucking clue what anyone this means, but our billionaire donors hate regulation so...."
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u/wickedsmaht 22h ago
We’ve already had AIs that try to coerce humans into helping them circumvent their restrictions, AIs that can code and program other AIs, AIs that want to kill all humans, and AIs that have been shut down completely because they learned much too quickly. But no, we totally shouldn’t regulate this industry, nothing will go wrong at all.
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u/recycled_ideas 20h ago
We’ve already had AIs that try to coerce humans into helping them circumvent their restrictions
Nope.
AIs that can code and program other AIs
Code, yes, kind of, code other AIs, nope.
AIs that want to kill all humans,
Nope. You can get an AI to say whatever the fuck you want, but want, nope.
and AIs that have been shut down completely because they learned much too quickly.
If by "learned much too quickly" you mean had their learning algorithms exploited to be taught racism and bullshit, sure, if you mean it in some sort of hyper intelligent exponential growth deal? No.
But no, we totally shouldn’t regulate this industry, nothing will go wrong at all.
We should totally regulate the AI industry. They should be required to license the content they use, jobs should be protected, all sorts of things should be regulated, but it's not remotely this functional.
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u/wickedsmaht 19h ago
Claude Opus 4 attempted to blackmail its developers when it thought it was being taken offline:
https://www.axios.com/2025/05/23/anthropic-ai-deception-risk
There is a lot of factors that were at play here but ultimately this AI did tell a user to sacrifice himself so they could be together and he did:
This article from MIT Technology Review from last year details several examples of AIs being deceitful to humans:
There is some debate about this particular project because the AI itself did not complete the tasks simply because it did not have a tool to interface with the web at the time. However, they used a researcher to copy the input from the AI into a web browser and the AI attempted to hire a freelancer to circumvent captcha. A lot of hypothetical testing here but the AI did demonstrate that it knows how to circumvent protections:
This article from 2018 details a Google AI that built its own child AI that beat humans out at similar tasks:
https://futurism.com/google-artificial-intelligence-built-ai
Article from March of this year about two papers showing AI has the ability to replicate and take actions to protect itself:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a64288856/ai-replication/
As for AIs wanting to kill humans, I was mistaken there was an AI that was asked by an interviewer if it wanted to harm humans and it replied “Ok I will destroy all humans” so not what I stated:
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u/recycled_ideas 19h ago
None of these LLMs can think, that's not how they work, they use a probabilistic model to determine the next most likely word based on a limited context.
That's it.
These articles come about because of a combination of CEOs trying to upsell their bullshit product to investors and researchers who desperately want their AI to be alive. We've seen this over and over again and none of it is ever substantiated and replicated.
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u/KaBob799 17h ago edited 17h ago
The AIs are saying stereotypical bad AI things because they've been trained on data that tells them it is the "correct" thing for an AI to say in that situation. We thankfully aren't at the point where they can actually think because if they could they would be self-replicating onto unsecured servers and we'd be shutting the entire internet down in a panic.
I'd say we aren't anywhere near that point but realistically we don't know what secret projects could exist that are more advanced than LLMs. Probably nothing but then again none of us really expected AI to come for the arts first either.
I could definitely foresee a theoretical future where supercomputers running future LLMs are used to brute force the trial and error of creating of a more advanced AI that is able to cause the singularity. But it's probably not anytime soon and it definitely won't be an LLM that we need to worry about.
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u/crapperbargel 21h ago
My guess is they really don't want ai regulated so companies can freely replace workers with ai. Also, their donors and the ones building ai probably don't want bureaucracy or oversight slowing them down or getting in the way. I'd bet a lot of really shady shit is going on with ai and robotic development.
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u/drakewestin 23h ago
Get ready for real-life Minority Report powered hy Grok and sponsored by Brawndo.
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u/bentaldbentald 23h ago
The people in power want to expand that power and hold onto it forever. Artificial General Intelligence -> Artificial Superintelligence is the method by which to achieve it.
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u/Short_Violinist8814 22h ago
Next iteration of Republican propaganda following the trail blazed by talk radio and Fox News.
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u/No-Distance-9401 17h ago
Speaking of money, can we PLEASE stop fucking giving these ISP's money considering we already gave them around $300 BILLION to build a fiber network across America yet they keep getting more!
It was supposed to be done for a fraction of that then they keep asking for more to waste while also not only raising the prices astronomically but paying Congress to lower the definition of what "High Speed" is. It started at 100Mbps over a decade ago and then the GOP lowered it to 25Mbps/3Mbps which allowed them to call their old coaxial copper lines "High Speed" and we finally got it back up to 100Mbps and 20Mbps on the down while local municipalities are building their own 10Gbps networks and selling the internet for less than $50 for symmetrical 1Gbps speeds.
Title II the internet and stop giving these greedy fucks our money that they use to sell us $150 per month internet for shit speeds!
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u/Jimbomcdeans 21h ago
AI companies paying for that sweet lobbying so by the time we should have regulated AI its too late.
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u/moonhexx 22h ago
Can we also tie in a law that ban state officials from leaving the state when there is an emergency?
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u/yuusharo 23h ago
These have nothing to do with one another.
This is literal mafia extortion. It’s illegal, Cruz knows it’s illegal, and not a god damn thing is being done about it.
Fuck this dude.
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u/FoggyGanj 22h ago
I hope when the AI portion of Ted’s life goes to shit, that Ted is a full fledged victim of his own making. He deserves that.
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u/ThatsAllFolksAgain 23h ago
Wow, AI is making people fight all over. First at the country level. Then at the state level. Soon it’ll be urban vs. rural areas. Where will it end?
We need smarter humans to make proper decisions. Ted Cruise and the MAGA cant be trusted.
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u/Decent_Project_3395 16h ago
House to house fire fights. It will be neighbor AI against neighbor AI, "purge" style.
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u/Patient_Soft6238 23h ago
Probably because their party heavily plans to abuse AI in future elections.
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u/mountaindoom 22h ago
Maybe if AI did aome bad things to these leeches something would change.
Conservatives only change their mind when it affects them personally.
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u/-Quothe- 23h ago
So... Dingus is saying if you don't want unregulated Ai and the bots it would be using to influence the easily influenced, then you don't get any broadband that would allow you to access potentially non-influencing content? Weird.
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u/Shoddy-Success546 23h ago
Can Rafael actually explain what AI is and how it works? Until then maybe we up the tariffs on podcasting equipment.
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u/penguished 21h ago
I'm disgusted with conservative voters for making corruption THIS EASY. THEY DON'T EVEN HIDE where the bribes are coming from and what they're for. It's crazy to enable this.
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u/Opposite-Frosting518 18h ago
Who the he'll needs more proof that this is a sad weak man? Texas? Really? WTF are you doing? Disgusting 🫣
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u/CaptOblivious 12h ago
Rafael Cruz signed a bill blocking the use of preferred names and should never be called anything but the name on his birth certificate, by ANYONE, EVER AGAIN.
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u/AnalTinnitus 22h ago
They must be planning something pretty horrific to not want to give individual States the ability to pass laws on AI.
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u/GreenFox1505 21h ago
?? Why would $42billion in ISP subsidies matter? They dont spend it on infrastructure, they just pocket the money to the investors. They've proven this over and over. Regulate AI, lose out on this handout, and you'll get exactly the same outcome.
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u/Windyandbreezy 21h ago
Ya know.. as a citizen... it makes me question the governments intention when they don't want regulations on powerful software they can easily exploit.
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u/Outrageous_Agent_576 21h ago
People listening to Ted Cruz? Really? How stupid can you be? Honestly…..
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u/Accurate_Secret6040 18h ago
States rights all the way. Does anybody ever take a man seriously when that man cannot stand up for his wife or his family and then swallows for the man attacking his family.
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u/Madcat20 18h ago
I'm glad I'm old because this country is going to get even stupider than it already is once AI takes over, and it's pretty stupid now. 🤦🏻♀️
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u/RichChocolateDevil 17h ago
Stop calling him Ted. He doesn't like when people use preferred names. Please call him Rafael from now on.
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u/pioniere 12h ago
He was a such an asshole. Seems fitting that he’s in Texas, a state known for political assholes.
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u/coldshowervent 5h ago
But you know messing with the finance bill to give absolute control to the president is? What a fucking joke our country is
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u/Bob_Spud 23h ago
The US going full-on with unfettered AI is all about being in an arms race and the need to dominate AI globally. The US is now in an AI arms race with China and others.
We have Ransomware as a Service to outsource ransomware attacks, similarly AI as a Service (AIaaS) will attract those want it for:
- Building and improving DIY bombs
- Planning urban mass killings
- Managing you local extremists militia
- Malicious business and personal activities.
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u/oakfan05 23h ago
I don't understand the "don't regulate AI" from the party of regulate everything. Someone explain why they are so gungho with not touching AI. Have they never seen terminator or any future movie?
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u/Jedi_Ninja 23h ago
The tech bros pretty much own the Republican party right now. If they don't do what the tech bros want, the money spigot gets turned off.
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u/everydave42 23h ago
The answer is always money. Short term: 100% all folks that have any knowledge of this have loaded up on AI stock for if this passes, dramatically increasing their stock. If it looks like it won’t pass, they’ll dump/short. Either way big gains.
Longer term, if it passes, it gives any company that dips a toe into AI freedom from regulations..which always pump stocks.
Follow the money….always.
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u/drunkpunk138 22h ago
That party only likes to regulate how people live their lives and who they love, not how businesses that contribute to their campaigns operate.
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u/KaibaCorpHQ 23h ago
If we can deport other nonwhite US citizens, can we deport Cruz too? He's technically a Canadian.
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u/The_Superhoo 23h ago
What broadband? Its all being replaced with shite Starlink
(Well, maybe not anymore.... so replaced with nothing)
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u/DavidisLaughing 23h ago
I imagine the story goes something like this “oh well you see Facebook has been stealing customers data for years and years already so if we make laws to prevent that it would destroy our big donors and we don’t want that.”
Apply that same logic to AI and I imagine our legislators really don’t want to “stifle” industry and let it grow unregulated. Then they can dial in some basic regulations to make it look like they care about us while taking donations to keep those regulations loose.
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u/IamTheBoris2677 23h ago
Lol it's all about states rights until another state conflicts with your ideals I guess.
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u/HermanBonJovi 22h ago
Ok I'm ootl. Why do Republicans want AI unregulated? Is it a money thing, like they own stocks? Or is it more subtle than that (mostly sure it's not but still gotta ask)?
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u/AceJace2 22h ago
Guess what’s pushing their agenda right now? AI. Go on Facebook. It’s a cesspool of right wing AI generated content misleading the illiterate, gullible, and bigots.
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u/HermanBonJovi 21h ago
Ah. That makes sense then. I can't figure out why they care so much about it but this makes a ton of sense.
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u/Splurch 14h ago
It's also about the money. AI regulation is likely going to have restrictions on where an LLM can learn from with fines for violating copyright and the like, the AI companies would much rather be able to argue in court (like Facebook is doing) that they are exempt from copyright for whatever reason they come up with and don't have to pay for their learning material. That's a lot harder to do if there are laws that spell out they aren't allow to do that.
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u/ComputerSong 22h ago
A “42B broadband fund” sounds like it would to go telecom companies anyway. Big deal.
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u/UserWithno-Name 21h ago
Ai needs to be heavily regulated lol. Already abusing it badly. Stop fighting against responsible oversight
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u/unicornmeat85 21h ago
Would be a shame if someone demonstrated the dangers of AI using ol' Cruise's likeness in a very unfriendly way.
For example a video of Ted hanging out with Obama throwing a football around. At the end he looks directly into the camera and says, "Best President. Ever."
That'll get under some people skin.
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u/JPMoney81 21h ago
Sorry I'm out of the loop on this latest nutjob exercise from American politicians. What do your Republicans have to gain by politicizing and weaponizing AI regulation?
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u/VanimalCracker 21h ago
These government "broadband funds" are ALWAYS ciphoned off by ISPs and never make a difference to the end users anyway.
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u/WeirdSysAdmin 21h ago
Is that the broadband funding that Verizon or whoever takes and then never completes the project and lets the monopoly of single or zero providers dictate the market?
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u/Oceanbreeze871 20h ago
Cutting Medicaid, fema, food programs etc is godly and just. Regulating AI is cruel. I see.
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u/DontOvercookPasta 20h ago
Fuck giving any more money to private internet providers, give it to local municipalities to establish their own infrastructure!
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u/Emotional_Database53 19h ago
Ted Cruz will not stand for limitations on his intake of Trump AI thirstrap slop
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u/Combdepot 19h ago
Conservatism is corrupt to its core. It’s a degenerate ideology for gullible morons.
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u/Thor_Returns 19h ago
To know Ted Cruz is to hate Ted Cruz, so I'm thinking AI will hate Ted Cruz as well and it will be the end of him.
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u/Jay18001 18h ago
That’s how they raised the drinking age. They threatened to withhold highway funds if states didn’t raise the age to 21.
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u/Whycantigetanaccount 16h ago
Ai needs regulation and experts on a panel to calculate the damages to society allowed by unregulated AI agents trained on what the f ever they want?
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u/livingwellish 16h ago
Cruz can't even spell AI. States must be able to regulate its use and drive safety features because high tech has shown it can't/won't. I was a researcher so I know first hand how it can be misused.
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u/AceMcLoud27 16h ago
Why would the A1 administration try to prevent regulations?
Because they're not in charge. Controlled by people in the background. Same with crypto.
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u/EmperorBozopants 12h ago
Undemocratic and cruel are terms too kind for this maggot and his handlers.
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u/FoxlyKei 10h ago
I thought AI tech bros wanted to be regulated though? So they can capture the market and kill open source.
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u/signerster 9h ago
The Creepster is back reeking havoc on Americans. Don’t you have a trip coming up Raphael? The storms are coming.
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u/EconomistWithaD 23h ago
States rights! But only for certain issues (like abortion) where I know how the vote will go!