2026 Legislative Session Priorities

RAW is pleased to release its 5 priorities for the 2026 Washington Legislative Session. As a charitable non-profit, we are most interested in developing research and insights into these priorities: how they would help Washingtonians, cultivate commerce, and make productive use of safe AI practices. Over the coming weeks we will expand these snippets into full position pieces. Access the PDF here.

2026 Legislative Session Priorities

1. Expand Responsible AI Infrastructure

Building on the success of the AI Task Force, create a standing Responsible AI Caucus to oversee responsible development of AI practices, tools, and standards. Compile an internal responsible AI toolbox that includes standards, operating procedures, guidebooks, evaluation metrics, codes of ethics, and frameworks.

2. Promote Environmental Stewardship

Require AI data center owners/operators to disclose resource usage, including energy, water, and construction and operation materials. Task departments like DNR and DFW with monitoring wildlife and ecological impacts of data centers.

3. Protect Washingtonians

Draw on the many existing international AI ethics frameworks, and the NIST Ethical AI Principles as AI Task Force recommended, to avoid and mitigate AI harms. Regulate bias in model training and application outcomes. Follow King County’s example and ban government use of facial recognition technologies, including law enforcement.

4. Understand AI Disparities

Fund, spotlight, and mobilize research into how the state’s digital disparities are changing in the era of AI. Establish baseline insights of unequal access, rates of AI literacy, and ecological costs borne by different social groups.

5. Protect the Workforce

Provide upskilling workshops, protect workers from displacement by AI, expand unemployment insurance for workers requiring a skillset pivot. Charge Dept of L&I to compile data on AI-related job effects.