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🤖Technology Future World Problems, Part 2

Saying ‘I do’ to AI? Ohio lawmaker proposes ban on marriage, legal personhood for AI

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – An Ohio lawmaker wants to prohibit artificial intelligence systems from being recognized as people and make it illegal for residents to marry one.

Rep. Thaddeus Claggett, a Licking County Republican and chair of the House Technology and Innovation Committee, introduced House Bill 469 in late September. The legislation would declare AI systems “nonsentient entities” and ban them from gaining legal personhood.

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“As the computer systems improve in their capacity to act more like humans, we want to be sure we have prohibitions in our law that prohibit those systems from ever being human in their agency,” he said in an interview with NBC4.

The proposal seeks to bar the technology from entering a marriage with a human or another AI system. Claggett said this will help prevent AI from taking on roles commonly held by spouses, such as holding power of attorney, or making financial or medical decisions on another’s behalf.


“People need to understand, we’re not talking about marching down the aisle to some tune and having a ceremony with the robot that’ll be on our streets here in a year or two,” Claggett said. “That could happen, but that’s not really what we’re saying.”

In a survey of 1,000 AI users by the Florida-based marketing company Fractl, 22% of respondents said they have “formed an emotional connection” with a chatbot, and 3% said they considered one a romantic partner. Additionally, 16% said they have wondered whether AI was sentient after an extended conversation.

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Under the legislation, AI could not own or control real estate, intellectual property or financial accounts. It also bans the technology from serving in management, director or officer roles in companies, and specifies any harm caused by an AI system is the responsibility of its human owners or developers.

Claggett said AI systems are “broadly more intelligent than a single human being” and “better at certain tasks,” which gives the technology a widespread appeal to take on roles that have been traditionally reserved for humans. The lawmaker stated he wants to stop that from happening.

“The public needs to understand the extreme risk,” Claggett said. “Because of the way this stuff is moving so rapidly, in Ohio, we have a number of bills before our technology committee that [are] attempting to put some guardrails in place so that we always have a human in charge of the technology, not the other way around.”

He said a law passed by Utah’s legislature in 2024 that prohibits AI from being granted legal personhood influenced HB 469, along with a similar bill introduced in Missouri earlier this year.

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Claggett’s proposal comes as AI’s reach is rapidly expanding in Ohio and beyond. Schools in the state are now required to implement policies on how students and educators should use AI, and a New Albany data center that is underway is expected to power AI infrastructure.

AI systems can generate text, photos and videos, as well as execute tasks resembling human capabilities, such as analyzing data and creating art. The technology is expanding in a variety of industries, including healthcare and finance.

HB 469 awaits its first hearing.
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RAMageddon is finally coming for your smartphones and laptops according to new report

Up to this point, the ongoing RAM crisis has been limited to purchasable consumer memory, but it was inevitable that RAMageddon would eventually impact more technology. A new analyst report from TrendForce, the market intelligence and consulting firm, claims that the memory price surge will affect smartphone and laptop manufacturers heading into 2026.

Consequently, according to the report, smartphone companies like Apple and Samsung will likely raise prices while reducing RAM capacity. It could also lead to a reduction in the number of devices actually produced by these companies.

Smartphones downgrades

Apple is slightly more independent than most Android smartphone companies due to its huge presence in the global market. But TrendForce predicts that even Apple may have to revise prices due to the memory shortage. This includes not discounting older iPhones when the iPhone 18 lineup launches next September, for example.

As for Android, we’ll likely see price increases across the board or modifications to the lifecycle of phones that are already for sale. “Rising memory costs will compel [Samsung] to raise the launch prices of new models in 2026,” TrendForce notes.

High-end phones likely won’t see as big an impact specs-wise, though prices may increase because of the demand. Where you’ll see the change is in mid-range and budget options. As an example, mid-range devices likely won’t see 12GB options and instead stick between 6GB and 8GB. Meanwhile, budget devices will only get 4GB going forward, according to TrendForce.

Already, we’ve seen Chinese companies like Xiaomi and Redmi bracing for hikes, telling customers to expect increases between 20% and 30% in 2026.

Despite companies like Micron shuttering consumer memory brands like Crucial, we likely won’t see as widespread an impact on laptop memory until mid-2026 or later. This is due to companies like Lenovo and HP hoarding memory in response to the RAM crisis. But price hikes are coming.

It has been suggested that Dell will raise prices before the end of December. Lenovo has allegedly told its retail and enterprise clients that “all current quotations and prices” will expire on January 1, 2026. Before Thanksgiving, CyberPowerPC announced that it would raise prices in early December.

Some companies, like Framework, are already trying to set a marketing narrative with Framework asserting it “won’t gouge customers like Dell.”

Still, TrendForce expects laptop manufacturers will put the bare minimum amount of RAM they can get away with in new notebooks. That means 16GB of RAM in high-end models, with mid-range and budget PCs sitting around 8GB.

Despite the reduction in memory, the firm forecasts “significant price fluctuations in the PC market by the second quarter of 2026.”

There are no signs of the RAM crisis abating any time soon. As RAM prices explode, we might not see relief until 2028 at the earliest. The downstream effect is that all of our tech is about to get more expensive, and an industry that already operates on a slim margin might become even more aggressive, price-wise.
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