Vermont H. 792: An act relating to the creation of a tuition-free scholarship program for Vermont students

Bill Text

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H.792 1
Introduced by Representatives Priestley of Bradford, Berbeco of Winooski, 2
Burrows of West Windsor, Cole of Hartford, Graning of 3
Jericho, Headrick of Burlington, Holcombe of Norwich, 4
McCann of Montpelier, McGill of Bridport, Mrowicki of 5
Putney, Nugent of South Burlington, Ode of Burlington, Pouech 6
of Hinesburg, Rachelson of Burlington, Scheu of Middlebury, 7
Sweeney of Shelburne, Tomlinson of Winooski, and Torre of 8
Moretown 9
Referred to Committee on 10
Date: 11
Subject: Commerce and trade; consumer protection; artificial intelligence; 12
liability standards 13
Statement of purpose of bill as introduced: This bill proposes to set liability 14
standards for developers and deployers of certain artificial intelligence 15
systems. 16
An act relating to liability standards for developers and deployers of 17
artificial intelligence systems 18

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It is hereby enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont: 1
Sec. 1. 9 V.S.A. chapter 118 is added to read: 2
CHAPTER 118. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 3
Subchapter 1. Liability Standards 4
§ 4193a. LEGISLATIVE INTENT 5
(a) Artificial intelligence systems are products that shift decision-making 6
power and responsibility away from persons to software-based systems, often 7
without direct human oversight. An artificial intelligence system can be 8
inherently dangerous due to its capabilities, potential for misuse or 9
exploitation, and ability to unilaterally evolve. 10
(b) Developers of sophisticated artificial intelligence systems have an 11
obligation to make the systems safe when used in reasonably foreseeable ways. 12
Deployers of these products also have an obligation to ensure that the products 13
are safe and used in a way that does not materially affect an individual’s rights. 14
§ 4193b. DEFINITIONS 15
As used in this subchapter: 16
(1) “Adequate warning or instruction” means a warning that a 17
reasonably prudent person in the same or similar circumstances would have 18
provided to a consumer with respect to the danger and communicates sufficient 19
information on the dangers and safe use of a product. 20

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(2) “Artificial intelligence system” means an engineered or machine-1
based system that varies in its level of autonomy and that can, for explicit or 2
implicit objectives, infer from the input it receives how to generate outputs that 3
can influence physical or virtual environments. 4
(3) “Consequential decision” means a decision that has either a legal or 5
similarly significant effect on an individual’s access to the criminal justice 6
system, housing, employment, credit, education, health care, or insurance. 7
(4)(A) “Deployer” means a person, including a developer, that operates 8
an artificial intelligence system for internal use or for use by a third party. 9
(B) “Deployer” does not include an individual or a small business. 10
For purposes of this definition, a small business is one with fewer than 20 11
employees or that has fewer than 10,000 users of its product. 12
(5) “Design” means the intended or known physical and material 13
characteristics of a product and includes any intended or known formulation or 14
content of the product and the usual result of the intended development or 15
other process used to produce the product, which includes unexpected skills or 16
behaviors that appear in a product. 17
(6) “Developer” means a person who designs, codes, produces, owns, or 18
substantially modifies an artificial intelligence system for internal use or for 19
use by a third party. 20

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(7) “Express warranty” means any material, positive statement, 1
affirmation of fact, promise, or description relating to a product, including any 2
sample or model of a product. 3
(8) “Generative artificial intelligence system” means an artificial 4
intelligence system that can generate derived synthetic content, such as text, 5
images, video, and audio, that emulates the structure and characteristics of the 6
artificial intelligence’s training data. 7
(9) “Harm” means: 8
(A) damage to property other than the product itself; 9
(B) personal physical, financial, or reputational injury; 10
(C) illness or death; 11
(D) mental or psychological anguish, emotional harm, or distortion of 12
a person’s behavior that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person; or 13
(E) any loss of consortium or services or other loss deriving from any 14
type of harm described in this subdivision (9). 15
(10) “High-impact artificial intelligence system” means any artificial 16
intelligence system, regardless of the number of parameters and supervision 17
structure, that: 18

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(A) is used, or reasonably foreseeable as being used: 1
(i) as a controlling facto