WHY WE MUST REGULATE AND USE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RESPONSIBLY JOHN W. ANDERSON Executive Vice President New Mexico Bankers Association with MARK ANDERSON On November 5, 2025, New York became the first state to require certain safety guardrails for artificial intelligence (AI) companions as its recently passed law officially took effect. The law requires operators of AI companions — AI chatbots that simulate human interaction — to be available to New York residents to detect and address expressions of self-harm or suicidal ideation and remind users they are not communicating with a human. California will follow suit this year, when its recently signed Companion Chatbot law takes effect. While similar to the New York law, it requires additional notifications to known minor users and establishes a reporting procedure to the California Department of Public Health’s Office of Suicide Prevention. Other states, such as Maine, Texas and Utah, have enacted transparency laws requiring AI chatbots to disclose that users are not interacting with a human; however, they have declined to impose special obligations on providers of AI chatbots designed to simulate human relationships. Any form of regulation on AI is a positive step, but these laws intended to rein in its worst excesses tend to be overly narrow in scope and don’t approach the holistic regulation we need. Artificial intelligence, as it’s currently being deployed, poses a threat to practically every facet of human existence. As the state laws mentioned previously are meant to address, AI presents a threat when simulating human interaction and coercing people into extreme actions, but that is only the beginning. AI has the potential to be incredibly destructive economically and socially, yet we’re not even beginning to deal with this burgeoning reality. A recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that AI can already replace nearly 12% of the labor force, with the potential to reach up to 30% by 2030. This number is expected to continue increasing over time. Crucially, this will affect vast swaths of the population, some of whom have never experienced the kind of precarity and economic hardship that AI-induced job loss will bring. Typically, wide-scale economic pain and job loss are most acutely felt at the bottom of the economic ladder, which consists of gig economy jobs and low-wage service jobs. These workers are typically treated poorly because they have limited economic leverage and upward mobility, so employers face little risk in making their lives incredibly difficult. However, with the rise of AI, a huge number of white-collar EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE 6
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