I've done thousands of dives in all kinds of conditions. Some of them crystal clear: Caribbean water where you can see a hundred feet in every direction and it feels less like diving than flying. Others in Colorado quarries where visibility was measured in arm lengths on a good day.
Silt. Algae. Sediment kicked up by whoever went down before you. Even in decent conditions, quarry water can turn on you fast. A careless fin kick near the bottom and you're in a brownout. Three feet of sight line. Two. Zero.
The first time a new diver hits real low visibility, the instinct is to panic. That's a reasonable response. Low visibility is disorienting. Panic, though, is the thing that gets you hurt, not the low viz. What you do instead is take a beat. Slow down. Check your compass. Follow the line you laid before conditions deteriorated. You stop trying to navigate by landmarks you can't see and start navigating by the fundamentals you practiced when you could. The dive doesn't get cancelled because you can't see. It gets executed more carefully.
The AI regulatory environment right now is low viz. Not just in Colorado. Pretty much everywhere in the country.
Colorado's first comprehensive AI anti-discrimination law was repealed before it ever took effect. The law that replaced it has a January 1, 2027 deadline, and the state rulemaking isn't finished. Last week, Congress introduced a bill that could preempt it before it kicks in. Nobody can tell you with confidence what the compliance picture looks like in 2028. The landmarks keep moving.
I spent time at Patton Boggs working inside federal-state regulatory fights. Preemption battles take years and rarely resolve the way either side expects. Waiting for the picture to clarify before you build anything isn't a strategy. It's just waiting.
Waiting for the picture to clarify before you build anything isn't a strategy. It's just waiting.
There's a structural piece worth understanding, and it actually comes from how diving with any operation works.
When you dive with a reputable shop, you're following two sets of standards at once. The certifying agency (SSI, PADI, NAUI) sets the floor: certification requirements, minimum safety protocols, the baseline that applies anywhere in the world. The shop layers its own protocols on top based on local conditions. Entry and exit procedures for that specific site. Altitude considerations for Colorado diving. Equipment checks calibrated to the temperature of that water.
You follow both. It's not complicated. That's just how it works.
Colorado's SB 26-189 is the dive shop's local protocols. Whatever federal framework eventually takes shape is the certifying agency's standards. The preemption debate amounts to arguing that the certifying agency should prohibit shops from having any local protocols at all. Every experienced diver will tell you that's not how you run a safe operation. A quarry in Colorado doesn't dive like a reef in Cozumel. A Colorado business using AI to screen job applicants doesn't look like a foundation model developer in San Francisco.
That's the framework you're operating inside of: layered, still forming, not yet finished. Which brings you back to the water.
Good divers don't sit on the boat waiting for perfect visibility. Perfect conditions are rare, but less than perfect conditions are still divable as long as you understand what the conditions require and draw on the tools in your toolkit to do it safely.
The low visibility in the AI regulatory environment right now doesn't mean the direction compliance is heading is unknowable. Low viz diving doesn't mean there's nothing out there. It means you can't see as far as you'd like, and you navigate accordingly.
Smart operators look for guideposts. NIST's AI Risk Management Framework is one of them. There are others emerging at the state and federal level. You navigate by what you can see, you anticipate what the conditions are telling you lies ahead, and you build in enough flexibility to adjust as the picture sharpens.
Here's where the analogy breaks down, though. In diving, you can choose not to get in the water if you don't like the conditions. A regulatory framework doesn't give you that option. The dive is happening. The only real question is whether you've done enough preparation to navigate it: understanding what can be reasonably known today, thinking through what can be reasonably anticipated for tomorrow, and leaving yourself the room to course-correct along the way.
In diving, the visibility doesn't always improve. With a regulatory framework, it does. That's the nature of law. The question is what you've built in the meantime, and whether it positions you to get where you need to be as quickly and cleanly as possible once it does.
If you want to think through what AI compliance looks like for your Colorado business before the 2027 deadline, here's how Hoog Law approaches it, or reach out directly.