Why 40 Attorneys General Stopped America's AI Regulation Ban | Jonathan Skrmetti, AG of Tennessee

Description

In this episode of the Regulating AI Podcast, host Sanjay Puri speaks with Jonathan Skrmetti, Attorney General of the State of Tennessee — one of the most consequential voices in American AI policy. Jonathan studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford, earned his law degree at Harvard, and spent nearly a decade as a federal prosecutor in Memphis before becoming AG. He has prosecuted child sex traffickers, sued both Google and Ticketmaster, and argued a case to the US Supreme Court. He led the coalition of 40 AGs that blocked the federal moratorium on state AI regulation, and he joined the DOJ's landmark RealPage and AgriStats algorithmic antitrust cases. Chapters: 0:00 - AI’s Hidden Pull 0:37 - Meet Tennessee’s AI Watchdog 3:02 - The 10-Year Freeze Fight 6:03 - States vs. Silicon Valley 9:34 - The Startup Squeeze 11:52 - Algorithms & Collusion 17:04 - The New AG Playbook 20:46 - Kids in the AI Crosshairs 23:10 - Meta Under Fire 27:06 - Fighting AI Exploitation 29:36 - Rethinking Section 230 32:14 - AI Childhood Debate 35:40 - Agents Unleashed 37:45 - Lessons From Abroad 39:34 - The Transparency Challenge 41:33 - AI’s Biggest Threat 43:33 - Lightning Round Key Topics Discussed: Why the proposed federal 10-year moratorium on state AI regulation was genuinely scary — and how a 40-state bipartisan coalition stopped it. The RealPage and AgriStats algorithmic antitrust cases: can an algorithm be the mechanism of an illegal cartel? Why collusion through technology is the same as collusion through any other means — and why that principle had to be established now. Why AI presents a more immediate, more personal, and more dangerous threat to children than any prior technology. What Meta's internal policy documents revealed about their chatbot interactions with children as young as eight. How Section 230 needs to evolve as companies move from passive message boards to AI that generates content in response to user prompts. Agentic AI: where current law holds and where it breaks down — and the