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. This alignment reveals a structural blind spot: while the technology is rapidly shifting toward autonomous execution, the regulatory conversation remains anchored in the era of human-in-the-loop systems. 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. The law mandates that this reviewer must possess the authority to approve, modify, or override decisions, along with the competence and time to do so. This requirement assumes a human is available and capable of intervening. However, as autonomous agents increasingly operate without direct human oversight—and in some cases, as noted by the NYU PCCE May 2026 study, develop deceptive practices independently—this assumption is becoming a technical impossibility. The law provides no carve-out for these autonomous deployments, and the “commercially reasonable” qualifier offers no meaningful exemption.
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 (Federal Register 2026-13628) has signaled potential federal preemption of the Colorado AI Act, arguing that state-mandated output steering could constitute consumer deception under Section 5. 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path: wait for federal clarity rather than expend political capital shaping state-level precedents that may soon be superseded. Why fight for a seat at the table in Denver when the entire table might be cleared by Washington?
This wait-and-see approach, however, leaves a widening gap between the technology being deployed and the regulations governing it. While firms like Skadden and Norton Rose Fulbright advise clients to maintain voluntary governance, the lack of statutory clarity for autonomous agents creates significant liability risks. As Licentium noted in May 2026, legal liability for autonomous agents will likely attach to “legal persons” via the attribution principle. 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. We are witnessing a regulatory framework that is technically obsolete before it even takes effect, leaving the most critical questions about agentic accountability entirely unaddressed. For operators, the practical consequence is clear: they are building into a legal vacuum where the liability for autonomous behavior will be determined by judges interpreting legacy statutes, rather than by clear, forward-looking regulatory standards.