Colorado’s recent pre-rulemaking comment period for the ADMT Act (SB 26-189) was defined by a conspicuous void. Between June 15 and July 13, 2026, stakeholders had a rare window to shape the regulatory future of automated decision-making. Yet, across the submissions, there was a collective silence regarding autonomous agents. No industry voice argued for agent-specific governance, and the Colorado Attorney General’s own considerations document failed to pose a single question about multi-agent systems or agentic AI. This silence is not an oversight; it is a strategic positioning choice.
By treating AI exclusively as decision-support software, both industry and regulators are maintaining a comfortable, if increasingly fictional, conceptual framework. The core of this friction lies in the statutory right to meaningful human review, a cornerstone of SB 26-189, which was signed into law on May 14, 2026, and is set to take effect on January 1, 2027.
Under the current statute, consumers retain the right to have a human review adverse outcomes triggered by automated systems. This requirement assumes a human is available and capable of intervening. However, as autonomous agents increasingly operate without direct human oversight, this assumption is becoming a technical impossibility.
The industry’s reluctance to push for agent-specific rules is likely driven by a shifting incentive calculus. The Federal Trade Commission’s July 1 policy statement has signaled potential federal preemption of the Colorado AI Act. For builders and operators, this creates a clear path: wait for federal clarity rather than expend political capital shaping state-level precedents that may soon be superseded.
This wait-and-see approach leaves a widening gap between the technology being deployed and the regulations governing it. As firms advise clients to maintain voluntary governance, the lack of statutory clarity for autonomous agents creates significant liability risks. By ignoring the agentic reality in the comment period, industry is effectively choosing to face these liabilities in court rather than in the rulemaking process.
The structural alignment between industry preferences and regulatory blind spots ensures that when the rules are finalized by January 1, 2027, they will likely be ill-equipped to handle the autonomous systems already in production.