Montana Made Computation a Constitutional Right. Devs Are Split.

Source: Dev.to

Montana’s “Right to Compute” Act

A state in the US just enshrined computation as a constitutional right, and the tech world is split on whether it’s genius or pure nightmare fuel.

Senate Bill 212, the “Right to Compute Act,” was signed into law in April 2025. It declares that the right to own and use computational resources—hardware, software, AI tools, servers—should be considered a fundamental liberty, akin to freedom of speech. Any government prohibition on computation must now be “demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored,” the same legal test applied to restrictions on speech. The Hacker News thread on this is currently trending at 243 points, and the comments are salty.

The Half‑Full Glass Take 🥂

Most state proposals for regulating AI lately aim to limit what you’re allowed to run on your personal stack. Montana’s policy is a 180‑degree turn. Instead of asking “Should we allow this particular AI tool?” the default is “You need an exceptionally good reason to prohibit it.”

• Developers can train models, run inference, and self‑host without fear of state bans.
• Idaho and New Hampshire are already kick‑starting their own versions of the law, suggesting a possible mini‑trend.

Now for the Anxious Part 😬

The Hacker News comments label the law a “corporate shield.” The fear is that if computation is a fundamental right, it becomes very hard to regulate AI even when it causes active damage.

• The bill requires upfront risk management for AIs that interact with critical infrastructure, including:
  • Human‑override mechanisms at deployment time
  • Annual audits
• For non‑critical use, the protections are broad and restrictions are few.

Some commentators enjoy the irony that the law is enthusiastic about your ability to run code on your own hardware while staying silent on the larger issue of company‑imposed bans on running your code on hardware you own.

My Own 2c 🤔

The principle is compelling: computation should be protected like speech, and you should be able to run whatever you want on machines you own. Yet implementation matters more than principle.

• If the “right to compute” becomes a shield that makes it impossible to enforce safety standards on a black‑box AI system you rent at sky‑high rates, we haven’t exactly advanced.
• The real question isn’t whether you have the right to compute; it’s who the bill is really defending when something goes wrong.

What do you think— is “Right to Compute” a genuine digital freedom, or a backdoor for deregulation? 👇