AI less regulated than milk: we counted the federal sections

Brad Smith told the BBC that milk and washing machines carry more regulation than AI, and asked for global safety rules: a duty to tell you when an AI agent breaks into your system, independent evaluators clearing a model before release, and a kill switch for a system that gets away from its owner.

“President Trump is right to say we don't want to slow innovation”

— Brad Smith, President of Microsoft, BBC interview

What the rulebook actually says

The claim is testable. The Code of Federal Regulations has a search API, and on 12 October it returns 3,431 sections matching milk against 95 matching «artificial intelligence». Milk runs across 28 titles, with 1,624 sections in Agriculture and 845 in Food and Drugs. The narrower phrase «fluid milk» returns 366 on its own, close to four times the whole AI count, and milkweed returns 72. AI is less regulated than milk on this measure, and Smith has that half right.

Washing machines break the other half of the comparison. That phrase returns 28 sections, under a third of the AI figure, so half of the line that travelled around the world yesterday does not survive the search box.

Where AI shows up, and where crypto does not

Where AI does turn up, it turns up as an export problem. Of its 95 sections, 82 sit in Title 15, and the top hits are export controls: Part 740 carries a License Exception Artificial Intelligence Authorization. Washington regulates AI as a thing you can ship abroad. Rules for what it does to the person using it are the gap Smith points at.

For crypto the count runs lower still. «Cryptocurrency» returns zero sections, and so do «bitcoin» and «virtual currency». «Digital asset» returns 25. The rules that bite reach crypto through securities, commodities and money-transmission language that never names the technology, which is how a FinCEN rule can cover wallet addresses without the word appearing in the CFR at all.

One more count: «super intelligence» returns zero, twelve days after the executive order told agencies to use it.

What the count does not measure

A count of sections measures surface. One milk section can be a labelling standard, and one AI section can govern an export regime, so the 36 to 1 ratio tells you where the rulebook has been written, not how hard it bites. Smith's own company supplies the second answer: Satya Nadella came to the White House lunch on 29 September and left without signing the accord that six other chief executives signed.

Informational material, not investment advice. The section counts come from the eCFR search API on 12 October 2026 and count sections that mention a term, which is not the same as the weight of the rules in them.