February 1, 2026
Do GPUs get free speech now?
'Right-to-Compute' Laws May Be Coming to Your State This Year
Montana says “let the chips run,” commenters say “vague, risky — and where’s DRM?”
TLDR: Montana passed the first “right‑to‑compute” law and similar bills are spreading, aiming to shield AI use from many state rules. Commenters are split between “free speech for servers” and warnings about vague language, federal clashes, and safety oversight getting kneecapped — with bonus snark about DRM and bad legal analogies
Montana just became the first state to pass a “right‑to‑compute” law, and the internet instantly turned into a courtroom. Fans say it treats computers like printing presses — tools for expression — while critics fire back that the whole thing is so broad it could bulldoze AI safety rules. One top‑liked correction dunked on the article’s favorite line, calling out the tired “you can’t yell fire in a theater” analogy as “a broken assertion,” while another demanded the nerdiest holy grail: “No mention of DRM. Shame.” The legal vibe? “Vibes, not details.” A commenter linked the actual Montana text here, then said it “seems pretty vague… IANAL” (that’s internet‑speak for “I am not a lawyer”).
Meanwhile, political drama splashed in: one thread claimed Trump’s 2025 executive order tried to preempt strict state AI rules — even threatening $42.5B in broadband funds — while New York fired back with its own tough law. Add ALEC‑backed copy‑paste bills marching into other states and you’ve got keyboard lawyers vs. silicon cowboys. Memes flew about a “Second Amendment for servers” and whether data centers now have constitutional swagger. Bottom line: some cheer a “freedom to compute,” others fear a legal force field that could stall audits, oversight, and even data‑center limits while courts hash it out
Key Points
- •Montana passed the first state “right-to-compute” law in April 2025 to protect AI and computational systems from certain regulations.
- •ALEC-backed model legislation is helping advance similar bills in multiple statehouses.
- •Proposals are statutory and aim to trigger heightened judicial scrutiny akin to speech or property rights.
- •Broad enactments could enable legal challenges to existing AI oversight, and may affect infrastructure, energy, or zoning rules depending on definitions.
- •Federal AI standards, if enacted, would generally preempt conflicting state provisions, limiting the reach of state-level compute protections.