State AI Leadership Project: Helping States Lead on Artificial Intelligence

Helping States Lead on Artificial Intelligence

The State AI Leadership (SAIL) Project is a new project of Chamber of Progress to help blue and purple states capture the upside of AI innovation while regulating smartly.

SAIL will work with state leaders to demonstrate how AI can make government work better, drive economic growth, and expand opportunity. We are promoting progress through pragmatism, not panic.

Focus Areas

Smart Regulation

Advance clear, targeted rules that address real harms while protecting innovation.Legislate precisely, not broadly.

Civic AI

Encourage AI adoption in state and local government to improve services, reduce costs, and make agencies more efficient.

Clean Energy and Infrastructure

Support AI-driven economic growth through renewable-powered data centers, faster permitting, and modernized energy grids.

Why This Matters

Congress should pass federal AI guardrails, but in the meantime states aren’t waiting. Too many state AI proposals are driven by foundation-funded “doomers” that don’t reflect voter AI optimism. And states that rushed into hasty AI regulation have woken up with a hangover.

The SAIL Project will shift that conversation: helping policymakers embrace AI as a benefit that can modernize public services, and strengthen local economies, and spur growth.

Early adopters of broad, untested AI laws are already seeing drawbacks. SAIL helps states take a “get it right before you get it fast” approach—focusing on what AI can do for people instead of what to fear from it.

Why Blue and Purple States?

While states have introduced hundreds of bills addressing AI, almost one-quarter of all bills were introduced in just four big Democratic states: CA, CO, IL, and NY. And while Congress has a low rate of bill passage, those Democratic trifecta states have higher bill passage rates, ranging from 12% to 70% of all bills passed.