U.S. state legislatures are where the action is for placing guardrails around artificial intelligence technologies, given the lack of meaningful federal regulation. The resounding defeat in Congress of a proposed moratorium on state-level AI regulation means states are free to continue filling the gap.

Several states have already enacted legislation around the use of AI. All 50 states have introduced various AI-related legislation in 2025.

Four aspects of AI in particular stand out from a regulatory perspective: government use of AI, AI in health care, facial recognition and generative AI.

Government use of AI

The oversight and responsible use of AI are especially critical in the public sector. Predictive AI – AI that performs statistical analysis to make forecasts – has transformed many governmental functions, from determining social services eligibility to making recommendations on criminal justice sentencing and parole.

But the widespread use of algorithmic decision-making could have major hidden costs. Potential algorithmic harms posed by AI systems used for government services include racial and gender biases.

Recognizing the potential for algorithmic harms, state legislatures have introduced bills focused on public sector use of AI, with emphasis on transparency, consumer protections and recognizing risks of AI deployment.

Several states have required AI developers to disclose risks posed by their systems. The Colorado Artificial Intelligence Act includes transparency and disclosure requirements for developers of AI systems involved in making consequential decisions, as well as for those who deploy them.

Montana’s new “Right to Compute” law sets requirements that AI developers adopt risk management frameworks – methods for addressing security and privacy in the development process – for AI systems involved in critical infrastructure. Some states have established bodies that provide oversight and regulatory authority, such as those specified in New York’s SB 8755 bill.

AI in health care

In the first half of 2025, 34 states introduced over 250 AI-related health bills. The bills generally fall into four categories: disclosure requirements, consumer protection, insurers’ use of AI and clinicians’ use of AI.

Bills about transparency define requirements for information that AI system developers and organizations that deploy the systems disclose.

Consumer protection bills aim to keep AI systems from unfairly discriminating against some people, and ensure that users of the systems have a way to contest decisions made using the technology.

Bills covering insurers provide oversight of the payers’ use of AI to make decisions about health care approvals and payments. And bills about clinical uses of AI regulate use of the technology in diagnosing and treating patients.

Facial recognition and surveillance

In the U.S., a long-standing legal doctrine that applies to privacy protection issues, including facial surveillance, is to protect individual autonomy against interference from the government. In this context, facial recognition technologies pose significant privacy challenges as well as risks from potential biases.

Facial recognition software, commonly used in predictive policing and national security, has exhibited biases against people of color and consequently is often considered a threat to civil liberties. A pathbreaking study by computer scientists Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru found that facial recognition software poses significant challenges for Black people and other historically disadvantaged minorities. Facial recognition software was less likely to correctly identify darker faces.

Bias also creeps into the data used to train these algorithms, for example when the composition of teams that guide the development of such facial recognition software lack diversity.

By the end of 2024, 15 states in the U.S. had enacted laws to limit the potential harms from facial recognition. Some elements of state-level regulations are requirements on vendors to publish bias test reports and data management practices, as well as the need for human review in the use of these technologies.

Generative AI and foundation models

The widespread use of generative AI has also prompted concerns from lawmakers in many states. Utah’s Artificial Intelligence Policy Act requires individuals and organizations to clearly disclose when they’re using generative AI systems to interact with someone when that person asks if AI is being used, though the legislature subsequently narrowed the scope to interactions that could involve dispensing advice or collecting sensitive information.

Last year, California passed AB 2013, a generative AI law that requires developers to post information on their websites about the data used to train their AI systems, including foundation models. Foundation models are any AI model that is trained on extremely large datasets and that can be adapted to a wide range of tasks without additional training.

AI developers have typically not been forthcoming about the training data they use. Such legislation could help copyright owners of content used in training AI overcome the lack of transparency.

Trying to fill the gap

In the absence of a comprehensive federal legislative framework, states have tried to address the gap by moving forward with their own legislative efforts. While such a patchwork of laws may complicate AI developers’ compliance efforts, I believe that states can provide important and needed oversight on privacy, civil rights and consumer protections.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration announced its AI Action Plan on July 23, 2025. The plan says “The Federal government should not allow AI-related Federal funding to be directed toward states with burdensome AI regulations … ”

The move could hinder state efforts to regulate AI if states have to weigh regulations that might run afoul of the administration’s definition of burdensome against needed federal funding for AI.

Anjana Susarla, Professor of Information Systems, Michigan State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Many employers are demanding more from workers these days, pushing them to log as many hours as possible.

Google, for example, told all its employees that they should expect to spend 60 or more hours in the office every week. Some tech companies are demanding 12-hour days, six days a week from their new hires.

More job applicants in health care, engineering and consulting have been told to expect long hours than previously demanded due to a weak job market.

On the other hand, companies such as Cisco, Booz Allen Hamilton and Intuit have earned a reputation of supporting a strong work-life balance, according to Glassdoor employee ratings.

To promote work-life balance, they offer flexible work options, give workers tips on setting boundaries and provide benefits to promote mental and physical well-being, including mindfulness and meditation training and personal coaching outside of work.

As a psychologist who studies workplace performance and well-being, I’ve seen abundant evidence that overworking employees can actually make them less productive. Instead, research shows that when employees have the time and space to lead a fulfilling life outside work, such as being free to spend time with their families or pursue creative hobbies, it improves their performance on the job.

Falling prey to the ‘focusing illusion’

For example, a team of researchers reviewed 70 studies looking at how managers support workers’ family lives. They found that when supervisors show consideration for workers’ personal roles as a family member, including providing help to workers and modeling work-family balance, those employees are more loyal and helpful on the job and are also less likely to think about quitting.

Another study found that workers who could take on creative projects outside of work became more creative at work, regardless of their own personalities. This was true even for workers who didn’t consider themselves to be very creative to start with, which suggests it was the workplace culture that really made a difference.

When employers become obsessed with their workers’ productivity, they can get hung up on tracking immediate goals such as the number of emails sent or sales calls made. But they tend to neglect other vital aspects of employees’ lives that, perhaps somewhat ironically, sustain long-term productivity.

Daniel Kahneman, the late psychologist whose research team won a Nobel Prize in economics, called this common misconception the “focusing illusion.”

In this case, many employers underestimate the hidden costs of making people work more hours than they can muster while maintaining some semblance of work-life balance.

Among them are mental health problems, burnout and high turnover rates. In other words, overly demanding policies can ultimately hinder the performance employers want to see.

Taking it from Simone Biles

Many top performers recognize the value of work while also valuing the time spent away from it.

“At the end of the day we’re human too,” said Simone Biles, who is widely considered the best gymnast on record. “We have to protect our mind and body, rather than just go out there and do what the world wants us to do.”

Elite athletes like Biles require time away from the spotlight to recuperate and hone their skills.

Others who are at the top of their professions turn to hobbies to recharge their batteries. Albert Einstein’s passion for playing the violin and piano was not merely a diversion from physics – it was instrumental to the famous and widely beloved scientist’s groundbreaking scientific insights.

Einstein’s second wife, Elsa Einstein, observed that he took short breaks to play music when he was thinking about his scientific theories.

Taking a break

I’ve reviewed hundreds of studies that show leisure time isn’t a luxury − it fulfills key psychological needs.

Taking longer and more frequent breaks from your job than your workaholic boss might like can help you get more rest, recover from work-related stress and increase your sense of mastery and autonomy.

That’s because when employees find fulfillment outside of work they tend to become better at their jobs, making their employers more likely to thrive.

That’s what a team of researchers found when they studied the workforce at a large city hospital in the U.S. Employees who thought their bosses supported their family life were happier with their jobs, more loyal and less likely to quit.

Unsurprisingly, the happier, more supported workers also gave their supervisors higher ratings.

Researchers who studied the daily leisure activities of 100 Dutch teachers found that when the educators could take some of their time off to relax and engage in hobbies outside work, they felt better and had an easier time coping with the demands of their job the next day.

Another study of German emergency service workers found that not having enough fun over the weekend, such as socializing with friends and relatives, can undermine job performance the following week.

Finding the hidden costs of overwork

The mental health consequences of overwork, spending too many hours on the job or getting mentally or physically exhausted by your work are significant and measurable.

According to the World Health Organization, working more than 55 hours per week is associated with a 35% higher risk of having a stroke and a 17% higher risk of developing heart disease.

Working too many hours can also contribute to burnout, a state of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion caused by long-term work stress. The World Health Organization officially recognizes burnout as a work-related health hazard.

A Gallup analysis conducted in March 2025 found that even employees who are engaged at work, meaning that they are highly committed, connected and enthusiastic about what they do for a living, are twice as likely to burn out if they log more than 45 hours a week on the job.

Burnout can be very costly for employers, ranging anywhere from US$4,000 to $20,000 per employee each year. These numbers are calculated from the average hourly salaries of employees and based on the impact of burnout on aspects such as missed workdays and reduced productivity at work. That means a company with 1,000 workers could lose around $4 million every year due to burnout.

Ultimately, employers that overwork their workers have high turnover rates.

One study found that the onset of mandatory overtime for South Korean nurses made more of them decide to quit their jobs.

Similarly, a national study of over 17,000 U.S.-based nurses found that when they worked longer hours, turnover increased. This pattern is evident in many other professions besides health care, such as finance and transportation.

Seeing turnover increase

Conservative estimates of the cost of turnover for employers ranges from 1.5 to two times an employee’s annual salary. This includes the costs of hiring, onboarding and training new employees. Critically, there are also hidden costs that are harder to estimate, such as losing the departed employee’s institutional knowledge and unique connections.

Over time, making workers work extra hours can undercut an employer’s performance and threaten its viability.

Abundant evidence indicates that supporting employees’ aspirations for happier and more meaningful lives within the workplace and beyond leaves workers and their employers alike better off.

Louis Tay, Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Purdue University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When you’re on a camping trip, you might have to pack your own food and maybe something to filter or treat water that you find. But imagine your campsite is in space, where there’s no water, and packing jugs of water would take up room when every inch of cargo space counts. That’s a key challenge engineers faced when designing the International Space Station.

Before NASA developed an advanced water recycling system, water made up nearly half the payload of shuttles traveling to the ISS. I am an environmental engineer and have conducted research at Kennedy Space Center’s Space Life Sciences Laboratory. As part of this work, I helped to develop a closed-loop water recovery system.

Today, NASA recovers over 90% of the water used in space. Clean water keeps an astronaut crew hydrated, hygienic and fed, as it can use it to rehydrate food. Recovering used water is a cornerstone of closed-loop life support, which is essential for future lunar bases, Mars missions and even potential space settlements.

NASA’s environmental control and life support system is a set of equipment and processes that perform several functions to manage air and water quality, waste, atmospheric pressure and emergency response systems such as fire detection and suppression. The water recovery system − one component of environmental control and life support − supports the astronauts aboard the ISS and plays a central role in water recycling.

Water systems built for microgravity

In microgravity environments like the ISS, every form of water available is valuable. The water recovery systems on the ISS collect water from several sources, including urine, moisture in cabin air, and hygiene – meaning from activities such as brushing teeth.

On Earth, wastewater includes various types of water: residential wastewater from sinks, showers and toilets; industrial wastewater from factories and manufacturing processes; and agricultural runoff, which contains fertilizers and pesticides.

In space, astronaut wastewater is much more concentrated than Earth-based wastewater. It contains significantly higher levels of urea – a compound from urine – salts, and surfactants from soaps and materials used for hygiene. To make the water safe to drink, the system needs to remove all of these quickly and effectively.

The water recovery systems used in space employ some of the same principles as Earth-based water treatment. However, they are specifically engineered to function in microgravity with minimal maintenance. These systems also must operate for months or even years without the need for replacement parts or hands-on intervention.

NASA’s water recovery system captures and recycles nearly all forms of water used or generated aboard the space station. It routes the collected wastewater to a system called the water processor assembly, where it is purified into safe, potable water that exceeds many Earth-based drinking water standards.

The water recovery and treatment system on the ISS consists of several subsystems.

Recovering water from urine and sweat

The urine processor assembly recovers about 75% of the water from urine by heating and vacuum compression. The recovered water is sent to the water processor assembly for further treatment. The remaining liquid, called brine, still contains a significant amount of water. So, NASA developed a brine processor assembly system to extract the final fraction of water from this urine brine.

In the brine processor assembly, warm, dry air evaporates water from the leftover brine. A filter separates the contaminants from the water vapor, and the water vapor is collected to become drinking water. This innovation pushed the water recovery system’s overall water recovery rate to an impressive 98%. The remaining 2% is combined with the other waste generated.

The air revitalization system condenses moisture from the cabin air – primarily water vapor from sweat and exhalation – into liquid water. It directs the recovered water to the water processor assembly, which treats all the collected water.

Treating recovered water

The water processor assembly’s treatment process includes several steps.

First, all the recovered water goes through filters to remove suspended particles such as dust. Then, a series of filters removes salts and some of the organic contaminants, followed by a chemical process called catalytic oxidation that uses heat and oxygen to break down the remaining organic compounds. The final step is adding iodine to the water to prevent microbial growth while it is stored.

The output is potable water — often cleaner than municipal tap water on Earth.

Getting to Mars and beyond

To make human missions to Mars possible, NASA has estimated that spacecraft must reclaim at least 98% of the water used on board. While self-sustaining travel to Mars is still a few years away, the new brine processor on the ISS has increased the water recovery rate enough that this 98% goal is now in reach. However, more work is needed to develop a compact system that can be used in a space ship.

The journey to Mars is complex, not just because of the distance involved, but because Mars and Earth are constantly moving in their respective orbits around the Sun.

The distance between the two planets varies depending on their positions. On average, they’re about 140 million miles (225 million km) apart, with the shortest theoretical approach, when the two planets’ orbits bring them close together, taking 33.9 million miles (54.6 million km).

A typical crewed mission is expected to take about nine months one way. A round-trip mission to Mars, including surface operations and return trajectory planning, could take around three years. In addition, launch windows occur only every 26 months, when Earth and Mars align favorably.

As NASA prepares to send humans on multiyear expeditions to the red planet, space agencies around the world continue to focus on improving propulsion and perfecting life support systems. Advances in closed-loop systems, robotic support and autonomous operations are all inching the dream of putting humans on Mars closer to reality.

Berrin Tansel, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Florida International University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.