Sponsors (7)
The bill offers accessible, technically vetted AI training and localized support to help small businesses adopt AI while avoiding new federal spending—but it leaves funding and accountability unclear and could produce vendor bias or force agencies to shift existing resources away from other priorities.
Small business owners gain free, centralized AI training and practical guidance (including risk-management and privacy best practices) to assess, adopt, and safely operate AI tools within 180 days, lowering legal/operational risk and lowering adoption barriers.
Developers, local SBA partners, and trainers can create specialized and localized AI training materials to address community-specific use cases, increasing relevance and uptake of the program.
Small businesses and technical users benefit from materials that are to be fact-checked and updated with NIST and an advisory group, improving technical accuracy and keeping guidance current.
The Act creates funding ambiguity: it does not specify new appropriations while also expecting resources to be developed and maintained, so taxpayers may ultimately bear costs or the program may be underfunded.
The Act exempts the advisory working group from the Federal Advisory Committee Act, reducing transparency and external accountability over membership, deliberations, and influence on guidance.
Although guidance is described as 'not preferential,' involvement of partners in content development risks implicitly favoring particular vendors or approaches, which could bias recommendations and disadvantage some small businesses.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Requires the SBA to create and publish free online AI education and training for small businesses, developed with NIST and an advisory group, and post it within 180 days.
Requires the Small Business Administration (SBA) to create and post free, public online training and educational resources about artificial intelligence (AI) tailored to small businesses. The materials must cover AI capabilities and limits, detection of AI outputs, privacy and risk management, human oversight, and guidance on whether AI fits particular tasks, and they must be developed with input from NIST and an advisory working group and posted within 180 days. Tells the SBA to coordinate distribution with its partner network and allow partners to build localized or specialized training, but it does not authorize any new funding to carry out these requirements.
Introduced October 17, 2025 by Hillary Scholten · Last progress January 26, 2026