- Government should protect youth from harmful AI applications like sexualized AI companions, Gov. Cox said.
- Utah will create a Pro-human AI Academic Consortium for human-centered innovation.
- State will invest $10 million to build an AI-ready workforce across key sectors.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox called on artificial intelligence companies to build AI tools that help rather than hurt people as he unveiled his AI initiative on Tuesday morning at an AI Summit in Salt Lake City.
The initiative includes ways Utah will use AI in state government and education, while also proposing possible regulations to protect children and adults from potential harm. The Utah governor also said the state has plans to invest in workforce training and will award AI companies that find positive uses for the technology.
“Every decision that we make related to AI, wherever it exists, (should ask) is it serving humankind, is it promoting human flourishing, or is it making us dumber and worse?” Cox told the tech industry executives, educators and policymakers at the summit.
He said the same tools that can cure diseases or clean the environment could also erode learning and agency if people simply “park on a couch” and let machines do everything.
A rebuke of social media — and a warning for AI
Cox opened his remarks with a sharp critique of how major social media platforms handled the last tech revolution. He claimed social media companies “knowingly” designed products that gave young people anxiety and eating disorders and directly caused many suicides, and said that governments are still dealing with the social fallout of those choices.
“It is and always has been the purview of government to protect our kids,” he said, adding that while he opposes heavy-handed regulation of AI development itself, he believes states and Congress must step in when AI tools are used to harm children — for example, by deploying sexualized chatbots or addictive companion apps targeted at teens.
Cox pointed to Utah’s existing laws on social media, AI bot transparency and data ownership as a template for future AI regulations, and said Congress should act nationally — but that Utah will move ahead regardless.
What ‘pro-human AI’ means for Utah
Under the “pro-human AI” umbrella, Cox said Utah will evaluate AI policy and investment through two core ideas:
- Human-guided: Systems should protect human dignity and agency, keep people in control of the tools that shape their work and lives, and avoid designs that mislead or obscure how they operate. AI must remain understandable and accountable, he said, and adaptable to human needs rather than the other way around.
- Human-enhancing: AI should expand people’s capabilities, open new opportunities and deepen human interaction — “connecting people and ideas in more meaningful ways, not just connecting people with robots or machines,” Cox said.
“Pro-human AI treats AI as an amplifier of human potential,” he said, describing an ecosystem that is “pioneering in its vision, empowering in its outcomes and connected in how it brings people and ideas together.”
6-pillar framework and new initiatives
Cox outlined how the state will apply those principles across six pillars:
- Workforce: Utah plans to invest $10 million in Talent Ready Utah’s Targeted Workforce Accelerator to build an “AI-ready workforce” in three high-impact sectors: artificial intelligence, energy and deep tech. The goal, Cox said, is to ensure that “every Utah student and worker can adapt, upskill and succeed as AI transforms the workplace” and that Utah’s workers don’t get left behind due to artificial intelligence.
- Industry: The state will launch a Pro-human AI Academic Consortium to coordinate “moonshot challenges” that drive breakthroughs in human-centered innovation, powered in part by a new platform called Convergence AI, built with the Nucleus Institute, to connect researchers, students and startups. The state will also create a “best pro-human AI companies” award to recognize businesses that lead in responsible, human-enhancing AI, with inaugural winners to be announced at next year’s summit.
- State government: Utah’s Division of Technology Services has launched an AI lab and is rolling out AI tools, with training and safeguards, to state employees to improve services and save taxpayer money. Cox said Utah will pair that innovation push with what he described as “the most robust government data privacy standards in the nation.”
- Academia and learning: Cox highlighted the Utah State Board of Education’s new “portrait of an AI-infused learner and teacher,” which outlines skills such as creativity, critical thinking, prompt writing and data privacy literacy for students and educators. He also praised a new higher education resolution that encourages personalized learning with AI while preserving “mentorship, personal guidance, curiosity and community” as essential human elements of education.
- Public policy: Utah’s first-in-the-nation Office of Artificial Intelligence Policy, created in 2024, will continue to run regulatory “sandboxes” that give innovators temporary relief from certain rules while preserving essential guardrails, Cox said. In the upcoming legislative session, he expects bills on harm reduction around AI companions, transparency rules for deepfakes and a broader study of data ownership and AI in health care.
Across all six pillars, Cox said Utah will “lead the nation to prevent anti-competitive actions” by large tech firms and push for an ecosystem where “we don’t end up with five AI companies — we need thousands.”
Utah aims to lead on ‘pro-human, pro-innovation’ AI
Tuesday’s summit at the Salt Palace Convention Center — themed “Utah’s Pro-Human Leadership in the Age of AI” — brings together leaders from government, business, academia and civil society to discuss AI’s impact on the workforce, policy and innovation.
Featured sessions include a conversation between Cox and Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince on “building trust in the age of AI,” as well as talks with NVIDIA co-founder Chris Malachowsky and actor and entrepreneur Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Cox closed his keynote by urging Utahns to keep both optimism and caution as AI advances.
“We have to be sober,” he said, adding: “We have to apply Utah values to this new technology. And if we do this right, Utah can continue to lead — not just the country, but the entire world — when it comes to the adoption of these tools in ways that make us better human beings.”