{"slug": "fred-harrison-stupid-is-as-stupid-does-the-case-for-governing-ai-in-wyoming", "title": "Fred Harrison: Stupid Is as Stupid Does — The Case for Governing AI in Wyoming", "summary": "Wyoming should seize the opportunity to govern artificial intelligence and protect citizens' privacy rights before Washington or corporate interests dictate the terms, argues Fred Harrison in a commentary invoking the state's history as the first to grant women's suffrage. Harrison warns that AI models, as statistical engines without conscience, pose dangers when wielded by unscrupulous humans, citing litigation over claims software Colossus and Canada's 2022 emergency bank freezes. He proposes a Wyoming Digital Bill of Rights modeled on Florida's, requiring consent for data collection, access and correction rights, and explanations for automated denials.", "body_md": "Wyoming is the first government on earth to let women vote.\n\nWe did not wait for Washington to tell us equality is a good idea; we wrote it into our territorial law in 1869 and never looked back.\n\nWe call ourselves the Equality State for a reason.\n\nSo, before this legislature spends one more hour on water tables and transformer noise at the new AI data centers, it ought to ask a plainer question: does Wyoming seize the bull by the horns and protect its citizens rights to privacy or wait for permission from corporate cronies and Washington?\n\nForrest Gump has it right: \"Stupid is as stupid does.\"\n\nYou do not judge a thing by its packaging. You judge it by what it does.\n\nApply that rule to artificial intelligence, and the fashionable debate about robot consciousness collapses, because it was never the right debate.\n\nAn AI model is a statistical engine.\n\nIt has no conscience and no capacity to tell right from wrong, a point the wisdom literature of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes makes long before anyone coded a neural network: wisdom is inseparable from moral judgment, and a mind without morals, however fast, is not wise.\n\nA tool that is quick but not wise does not deserve to lead; it answers to the human master in charge.\n\nThat is the real danger, and it is entirely human. The peril is not a machine waking up. It is a person with no scruples and a login.\n\nThe evidence already exists.\n\nIn the personal-injury insurance industry, claims software such as Colossus sits at the center of years of litigation, with plaintiffs' attorneys and courts in several states alleging it systematically undervalues claims using inputs the claimant never sees.\n\nWhen a settlement offer comes from a black box, the injured party has no one to cross-examine and no record to appeal.\n\nExtend the principle: a hidden model can flag a person for a mortgage, a lease, or a job using data he never volunteered and cannot correct. He is simply told no.\n\nNor is this hypothetical.\n\nDuring the 2022 Canadian trucker protests, Ottawa invoked emergency powers and directed banks to freeze the accounts of protest organizers without a prior court order, a measure a Canadian federal court later ruled unreasonable, though the government appeals.\n\nWhatever side one takes on the truckers, the mechanism ought to worry every American: a government decides who may use money, with keystrokes, not warrants.\n\nA citizen frozen out of his bank by an authority he cannot see or cross-examine is not free.\n\nThis is where Wyoming stops being a spectator and becomes a party to the case.\n\nThe data centers are not coming; they are here, and more are coming.\n\nEvery month spent on cooling-water permits without legislating the privacy of the data is a month the real policy gets written somewhere else, on terms Wyoming did not negotiate.\n\nOn the right to private ownership of the data Wyoming must be first or it will be too late.\n\nFlorida offers a workable model, not a perfect one.\n\nIts Digital Bill of Rights requires large data controllers to get consent before processing sensitive personal data, and gives consumers the right to access, correct, and delete their information.\n\nThese duties fall only on companies above a revenue threshold, so the protection is narrower than it sounds, but a floor is a floor, and Wyoming should build higher.\n\nThe framework Wyoming needs is not complicated.\n\nRequire real consent before a company collects sensitive personal data, not a box buried in fine print.\n\nGive people the same right over an algorithmic file that they hold over a credit file: to see it, correct it, delete it.\n\nWhen an automated system denies someone a loan, a job, or a claim, it owes that person a plain explanation.\n\nAnd the burden of proof sits with the company, not the citizen, since it is easier for the party that built the black box to open it than for the party locked out to pick the lock.\n\nState law reaches only so far.\n\nData crosses state lines the moment it is sent, so no Wyoming statute alone can fully protect a citizen whose information sits on a server another jurisdiction controls.\n\nCongress must eventually set a national floor, but the absence of a federal law is a reason to act now, not later.\n\nNone of this argues against the data centers.\n\nThese facilities expand the tax base that pays for schools and roads, and they bring jobs that let young families build a life here instead of leaving.\n\nWyoming welcomes that growth without apology. Growth and liberty are not in tension.\n\nA state that writes clear rules for consent, access, and accountability does not scare off serious investment; it attracts it, because clear rules are what a company with nothing to hide should want.\n\nWyoming can have jobs and keep its self-respect. It only has to choose to write the rule first.\n\nWe did not wait in 1869. We must not wait now. Govern the data, or the people who hold it will govern you.\n\n*Fred Harrison can be reached at: **Fred.Harrison@fjhlawoffice.com*", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/fred-harrison-stupid-is-as-stupid-does-the-case-for-governing-ai-in-wyoming", "canonical_source": "https://cowboystatedaily.com/2026/07/21/fred-harrison-stupid-is-as-stupid-does-the-case-for-governing-ai-in-wyoming/", "published_at": "2026-07-21 23:40:41+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-21 23:56:44.631939+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-policy", "ai-ethics", "ai-safety"], "entities": ["Fred Harrison", "Wyoming", "Florida", "Colossus", "Ottawa"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/fred-harrison-stupid-is-as-stupid-does-the-case-for-governing-ai-in-wyoming", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/fred-harrison-stupid-is-as-stupid-does-the-case-for-governing-ai-in-wyoming.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/fred-harrison-stupid-is-as-stupid-does-the-case-for-governing-ai-in-wyoming.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/fred-harrison-stupid-is-as-stupid-does-the-case-for-governing-ai-in-wyoming.jsonld"}}