Two Thousand AI Bills and Still No Long-Term Plan: The Case for a National Regulator
States, Congress and the White House have flooded the zone with AI proposals. A former Nasdaq CEO argues that every single one fixes today's problem while leaving tomorrow's wide open.
Key points
- U.S. states, Congress and the executive branch have more than 2,000 AI-related proposals active as of 2025, according to CNBC Tech.
- No current proposal attempts to build a permanent, forward-looking federal body dedicated solely to overseeing artificial intelligence.
- Historic regulators like the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal agency that polices financial markets) and the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees nuclear power safety) were both created only after major disasters struck.
- Bob Greifeld, former Nasdaq CEO and co-founder at Cornerstone Financial Technology, calls for a dedicated national AI regulator before a crisis forces one into existence.
- Greifeld points to the SEC's public-comment model for major technology changes as a partial template worth copying.
More than 2,000 separate proposals to regulate artificial intelligence are currently circulating across American government. States account for over 1,500 of them. Congress holds hundreds more. The White House has added dozens of executive actions on top.
That sounds like a lot of attention. It isn't enough.
That is the argument Bob Greifeld, the former chief executive of Nasdaq and now co-founder at Cornerstone Financial Technology, made in an opinion piece carried by CNBC Tech. His core point: every single proposal addresses a specific slice of today's AI problem. Not one lays the groundwork for a durable institution that can keep pace as the technology keeps changing.
Why does this gap matter?
Without a long-term framework, rules get written in reaction to whatever went wrong most recently, leaving the next problem uncovered until it blows up.
Greifeld draws a direct comparison to how the United States has handled disruptive technologies before. The SEC was created in 1934, after the 1929 stock-market crash wiped out millions of ordinary investors. The NRC came into existence after the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. Both agencies were born from crisis.
His argument is simple: do not wait for the AI equivalent of a market crash or a meltdown before building the institution.
What would a national AI regulator actually do?
No formal proposal exists yet, so the shape is speculative, but Greifeld offers one concrete model to borrow from.
At Nasdaq, when engineers wanted to change the core trading system, SEC rules required the exchange to publish the details of those changes publicly and invite outside comment before anything went live. Competitors could read exactly what was coming. Greifeld found that uncomfortable when he first arrived.
Looking back, he credits that transparency requirement with helping make U.S. capital markets the strongest in the world.
He expects that public comment on major updates to a large language model, the technology behind chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude, would attract far more public response than a tweak to how a stock exchange processes orders. That scale of public interest, he argues, is precisely why the model fits.
What should ordinary people take from this?
If you use AI tools at work, in healthcare, or at home, the rules protecting you right now are a patchwork. Some states have passed protections; others have none. A federal body with a clear mandate would set a floor everywhere.
Greifeld is candid that a regulator will slow some innovation in the short term. He believes it is worth it: clear rules of the road, he writes, ultimately create the conditions for better outcomes for everyone.
The question is whether Washington moves before something goes badly wrong.
Common questions
Are any of the 2,000-plus AI proposals close to becoming law?
Some state-level bills have passed, covering areas like deepfakes (fake AI-generated videos or audio) and automated hiring decisions. No comprehensive federal AI law has cleared Congress as of mid-2025.
Would a national AI regulator replace state laws?
Not automatically. Federal agencies typically set a minimum standard; states can layer additional rules on top, as they do with financial consumer protection today.
