Ohio House Technology and Innovation Committee - 3-11-2026

Chair Glaggett? Here. Vice Chair Workman? Here. Ranking Member Muhammad? Here. Representative Bryant Bailey is excused. Representative Cockley? Here. Representative Demetri is excused. Representative Ferguson is excused. Representative Hall? Here. Representative Holmes? Here. Representative Ty Matthews is excused. Representative

I would now recognize Vice Chair Workman for a motion. Thank you, Chair. I move to amend House Bill 301 with Substitute Bill L-136-1467-5.

Yes, this substitute bill incorporates stakeholder feedback to narrow the bill to its intended application to digital electronic equipment akin to cell phones and laptops. It clarifies exemptions on agricultural equipment, vehicles, and their periphery components, periphery components, exempts print imaging devices from parts pairing provision to comply with federal law enforcement requirements, exempts equipment that could be debilitating to national security under federal law, exempts business-to-business and business-to-government transactions involving equipment not available to the general public, allows manufacturers to instead provide to the consumer equivalent or better replacement devices at no charge.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Chairman Claggett, Vice Chair, Workman, Reiki Member Mohamed, and members of the House Technology and Innovation Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to present my proponent testimony on House Bill 628. My name is Lauren Wilson, and I'm a senior director at Fathom. Fathom is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that is working to cultivate, build, and scale governance solutions that strengthen public trust in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, while also ensuring the United States remains a global leader in technological innovation. AI will be the most transformational, disruptive technology in generations. We live in a time of incredible capability, uncertainty, opportunity, risk. AI can and will be all of these things. American innovation is front and center as AI becomes incorporated into every element of our lives and our economy, and we must proactively ensure that the United States continues to lead while also working to mitigate potential harms from the technology. Fathom was created to address this challenge. We convene leaders from industry, academia, government, and civil society to develop market-friendly governance models that are technically credible, scalable, and capable of evolving alongside rapidly advancing AI models and systems. Through this work, we have developed the concept of an independent oversight marketplace, implemented through independent verification organizations, or IVOs. House Bill 628 creates the framework for IVOs in Ohio, a light-touch, voluntary system that relies on independent expert verification, market-based accountability, and outcomes-driven governance, rather than prescriptive and procedural check-the-box regulation. HB 628 implements a common-sense and market-driven approach to AI governance in two ways. One, it creates a framework for the use of independent, technically qualified assessments of AI systems licensed by the state. And two it creates meaningful incentives including certain legal protections presumptions of compliance and opportunities to cure that encourage voluntary participation AI products are now used in contexts that directly affect consumers' financial stability, access to health care, employment opportunities, insurance coverage, electricity, housing, personal privacy. When these systems make or materially influence consequential decisions, failures can result in real harm. In these circumstances, oversight that relies solely on internal company testing or case-by-case government review is unlikely to be timely enough or sufficient. Regulators cannot reasonably be expected to maintain the specialized technical capacity needed to evaluate every new model or system, and companies cannot be expected to self-certify in areas where public trust is essential. For this reason, independent verification should be a central feature of modern AI governance. Ohio has an opportunity to lead in developing and establishing this innovative and effective governance structure. By combining independent verification and incentive-based compliance, the state can create a model that protects consumers, supports continuous innovation, and can scale as AI becomes increasingly more sophisticated and widely deployed across the Ohio economy. We appreciate the committee's thoughtful and timely work on this bill. We look forward to our continued collaboration with you as it moves through the legislative process, and I welcome any questions that you have.

Chairman, thank you for the question. I think this is one of a number of possible solutions. AI is going to, is changing all the time. We can't predict a year from now where and how AI will be implemented in our economy. I think that's one of the beautiful elements of IVOs, right, is that you have the technological – the IVOs are able to respond quickly, have the technical capacity to address those concerns. But they won't be able to address every item. I think the IVOs can especially focus on physical harm, right? We talked about child safety, products being implemented in either health care or construction equipment where physical harm could be demonstrated or be a result, where you'd be able to demonstrate through IVOs that the harm that the mitigation put in place is lower than you would see otherwise. There will be applications where this won't be sufficient or won't be the right solution. Another reason why I think this is a great step forward is that it doesn't prevent other kinds of bills, laws, legislations either at the state level, in other states, at the federal level from going into place that would complement this measure.

There's a number of incentives, a care approach rather than an enforcement approach that would incentivize applications, developers from going the voluntary route. In the draft bill, there's a rebuttable presumption. And so for developers who are developing their technology, who are doing research here in Ohio, this would be a welcome place for them to come and do that research and that development because if they are operating in good faith and they have gone through the IBO process, that would be that sort of green check of saying we have met a heightened standard of care and that would be something in a court of law that would be very beneficial.

Yeah, great question, Chairman. I think, right, if this process is set up in Ohio, then you have what I don't think will need to do tech and big developers. I don't think will need any help knowing that this is happening. I say in jest, right, they're all very closely monitoring any types of legislation happening around the country that deal with AI. Why I think this can be successful is if you have, I think the most obvious probably use cases are business to business. So you have an education department who wants to be able to bring AI and have their K-12 students utilizing the application. That public school system may not be comfortable utilizing an AI application that doesn't have that IVO checkmark, right? So it's going to incentivize developers who want to be able to partner and want to have a contract with the public education department to go through the IVO process. Same with health care, right? So you can imagine these sort of high-risk, vulnerable, you're dealing with a lot of either potential personal harm or sensitive personal information, vulnerable populations, that this process of being certified and demonstrating your risk mitigation and having those verified by a third party would be incredibly beneficial to those entities who want to partner with some of these institutions, where for now those are the folks who hold the back, right? If I'm a healthcare system, I'm a hospital, everyone else is using AI. I want to be using AI too, right? It shows a ton of efficiencies.

That's right. Right? It should be completely independent.

Chairman, I love that example. and I think another very similar example of sort of a private entity doing verification of an incredibly technical capacity is Underwriters Laboratory, right, I think we mentioned this one. I met with a few of you last week, right, that every light bulb in this room has the UL stamp on it. Every light bulb in this building, in your home, has the UL stamp on it. That is a private entity that the government respects from their technical capacity to be able to evaluate the safety of light bulbs. Very similar approach here. Right now, this process as it's proposed of being independent from private industry, right now all of the safety assurance that's happening at the moment is happening at the labs. And I'm very glad they're doing it. They have a lot of very smart folks who are doing a ton of this work, but they're doing it inside the companies. And so anything we can do, I think it is a benefit to society and to labs and to government to be able to say, let's separate out from the profitability motive of the labs doing well, create a market where you're creating an ability for companies to grow and thrive from developing technology that verifies that what the labs are developing is safe.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you so much for coming in. And we had some time in my office earlier as well, so I appreciate that. So I think the great debate that we have before us is the opportunity here to unleash our potential using these technologies and also to make sure that we have the right parameters in place to secure those things that we feel most valuable, right? Privacy, security, infrastructure, things of the sort. So do you feel that incentivizing is enough incentivizing to get that green checkmark or is it something we should move toward compliance or making sure that we have complete authority in the process and that it locked down and secure and AI is safe for all Or would that create a chilling effect? And then I have a second question after that.

Follow-up, Chair? Thank you. So I guess my second question is, what are you seeing in other states across the country? Is this being adopted in other states as well?

thank you chairman and it's good to see you i had the pleasure of meeting with fathom including lauren last week and given the chair's interest of education i was hoping that maybe you could share the video with the committee because it is so educational and that i think will help people to grasp the bill a little bit better as well absolutely um we had inquired about showing

So if you could get it to Sam, then we'll get it distributed. Thank you. Thanks for bringing that up. That's really helpful.

Thank you. Very helpful. Thank you, Chair.