US state AI bills introduced (legislative year)

Count of state bills in NCSL's artificial-intelligence legislation tracker for the legislative year, with the enacted subset alongside.

Why it matters. The institutional response the paper expects to lag deployment; volume says attention, enactments say binding rules.

Proxy types

policy

Unit

count

Cadence

annual

Valve

adoption to adaptation

• series ncsl.us.ai_bills_introduced.a
• series ncsl.us.ai_bills_enacted.a
• source NCSL artificial intelligence legislation tracker · default tier 6 · NCSL; counts only

Counted from NCSL's table, so scraped and pending until a human merges; bills are not laws.

2 observations. Hollow points are disputed (see counterevidence). Every point links to its observation.

NCSL's 2025 legislation tracker holds 1,035 state AI bills, of which 170 carry an enacted or signed status, counted from the published table on 11 Sep 2026. Inside the normal band (500 or more a year: legislatures reacting at their own pace). One tracker, scraped, tier 6, so the status is capped at emerging until a second count (MultiState or the Transparency Coalition) corroborates. Initial seed.

The tracker's prior expectation was consistent with normal; the evaluator reads emerging. The evaluator wins until a reviewed override.

• 2025-12-31 us · 1035as of 2025-12-31

1. 2026-09-10○unmeasured →to ◐emergingconf — → 55 · evaluate

   NCSL's 2025 legislation tracker holds 1,035 state AI bills, of which 170 carry an enacted or signed status, counted from the published table on 11 Sep 2026. Inside the normal band (500 or more a year: legislatures reacting at their own pace). One tracker, scraped, tier 6, so the status is capped at emerging until a second count (MultiState or the Transparency Coalition) corroborates. Initial seed.

   obs:758a7f72

55 / 95 — mixed or hard to operationalise

Confidence is independent of status: 90–95 multiple strong independent sources; 70–89 good evidence, some ambiguity; 50–69 mixed or hard to operationalise; below 50 limited or vague.

• FDA-authorised AI-enabled devices, growth ●consistent with normal