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(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Gov. Spencer Cox speaks during a panel during the 2025 AI Summit at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Gov. Spencer Cox told a gathering of policymakers and tech leaders Tuesday morning that as artificial intelligence seeps further into daily life, \u201cWe have to apply Utah values to this new technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
So his administration plans to launch what the governor called a \u201cpro-human AI\u201d initiative in an effort to shape the future of AI development and use in the state. <\/p>\n
The move comes almost two years after lawmakers voted to create an Office of Artificial Intelligence Policy<\/a>, which helped arrange the Utah AI Summit in downtown Salt Lake City where Cox made the announcement.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve used human ingenuity … to build machines and connect them together and take, again, all of human knowledge and employ it in whatever way we want, whatever way we decide,\u201d Cox said. \u201cBut here\u2019s the thing: We have to decide.\u201d<\/p>\n Utah\u2019s second-term Republican governor added, \u201cI do not believe that government should be telling companies how to develop technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n But the government should be acting to protect data privacy and children, Cox said. And Utah is acting, he continued, because Congress hasn\u2019t taken on the responsibility. <\/p>\n His comments come as a contingent of federal lawmakers backed by President Donald Trump is eyeing a way to ban state AI regulations<\/a>. Two attempts to add such a measure massive spending bills \u2014 most recently an annual defense budget bill making its way through Congress \u2014 have failed amid opposition, including from Utah officials<\/a>.<\/p>\n The White House is reportedly weighing an executive order<\/a> to undermine state AI laws through lawsuits and withholding federal funds.<\/p>\n \u201cThe government should not be regulating the development of AI, but the minute you decide to use those tools to give my kid a sexualized chatbot, then it\u2019s my business, and it\u2019s the government\u2019s business,\u201d Cox said, adding, \u201cAnd Congress should not be stopping us from being able to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI would much prefer that we have a Congress that can actually pass a bill, that could actually do something, that could function the way it was designed to function. But if it is not going to function, then the states must act, and we must have the ability to do that, and we will fight for that ability to do it,\u201d Cox told the audience.<\/p>\n Utah\u2019s initiative will spread across six areas: workforce, industry, state government, academia, public policy and learning, Cox said.<\/p>\n The state plans to launch a \u201cpro-human AI academic consortium,\u201d according to Cox, \u201cto launch moonshot challenges that drive breakthroughs in human-centered innovation and advance human flourishing.\u201d<\/p>\n It will also invest $10 million in developing curriculum to ensure Utah\u2019s workforce is \u201cAI-ready,\u201d with focuses on the energy and so-called \u201cdeep tech\u201d sectors. The latter includes producing semiconductors, quantum computing and other technologies foundational to AI. <\/p>\n \u201cThe goal here is to ensure that every Utah student and worker can adapt, up-skill and succeed as AI transforms the workplace,\u201d Cox said.<\/p>\n And the governor is expanding the use of AI throughout state government. <\/p>\n In the upcoming legislative session, which begins in January, Cox said lawmakers will weigh regulations to reduce the negative impacts of AI chatbots, require more transparency around AI-generated deepfakes and restrain the use of AI in health care.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, the governor signed a law barring<\/a> mental health chatbots from selling Utahns\u2019 personal health data or using it to target users with ads.<\/p>\n Cox has dedicated much of his five years in office to implementing guardrails for social media companies<\/a> \u2014 some of which have developed their own AI platforms \u2014 with the aim of minimizing harms to children. Parts of those efforts have been blocked in court.<\/p>\n Many of the possible downfalls of expected AI regulation mirror the criticisms of laws affecting children\u2019s social media use. Opponents have worried about the limits such laws place on young people\u2019s free expression, and whether content the Republican state deems harmful would include information helpful to vulnerable groups like LGBTQ+ youth. <\/p>\n Note to readers, Dec. 2, 4:15 p.m. \u2022 <\/b><\/i>This story has been updated to reflect developments in deliberations over a federal ban on state AI regulations.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The state will invest $10 million in a curriculum to ensure Utah\u2019s workforce is \u201cAI-ready,\u201d Cox said during a technology summit Tuesday. (Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Gov. Spencer Cox speaks during a panel during the 2025 AI Summit at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025. Gov. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Utah-Gov-Cox-annoucnes-new-AI-innaitive-at-tech-conference.jp.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11983,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11981\/revisions\/11983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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