Govt Regulations
Congress spent its AI budget like it had a favorite bar, and the bar is ChatGPT
By Arjun
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3 Aug 5:32 PM
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Via TechCrunch
House disbursements, year to March 31: OpenAI vacuumed about ninety percent of identifiable AI-tool spend, roughly $100,580 of $113,740-plus. Claude’s tip jar: $13,160. Democrats outspent Republicans. Staffers draft memos, summarize bills, answer constituents. TechCrunch bounced CNBC’s numbers into the timeline. It matters as a rare public receipt for which models government offices actually buy when the camera is not rolling. Caveat: free tiers and bundled Microsoft suites still hide plenty of usage offstage, so treat the ledger as a spotlight, not the whole theater.
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Karnataka chief minister D.K. Shivakumar met an Anthropic delegation to explore a long-term partnership covering governance, higher education, healthcare, research, and the state's startup base, The Economic Times reported. Talks include Claude certification under the NIPUNA skilling push, a possible 100-day roadmap with milestones, and subsidised Claude access for institutions such as VTU. The outreach follows plans for India's first government-led AI university and incubation centre, with IT minister Priyank Kharge helping convene global AI firms. Anthropic attendees included international policy and India leads. These are exploratory discussions, not a signed MoU, so curriculum, subsidy terms, and university legislation can still change.
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India's Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Centre to consider suggestions for binding guidelines on AI ethics, transparency in surveillance and content moderation, algorithmic impact assessments, and human oversight of high-risk government systems, The Economic Times reported. A bench led by Chief Justice Surya Kant disposed of the PIL without ruling on the merits, saying the issues sit in a technical policy domain, and told the petitioner to send the writ as a representation. That matters as courts keep pushing AI governance toward MeitY. The caveat is that the order creates no new statute yet, only a duty to consider the representation.
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