Maryland has released its first statewide benchmark of how businesses are adopting artificial intelligence, at an innovation summit where Governor Wes Moore also signed an executive order setting guardrails for data center development.
The Maryland Business AI Benchmark Report, released by the Maryland State Innovation Team at the October 1 summit in Baltimore, surveys senior business decision-makers on AI adoption, productivity effects and workforce expectations, giving the state its most detailed evidence base on the technology, according to the governor's office. About 400 leaders from government, business, labour, philanthropy and academia attended.
Moore's keynote framed the state's approach around three principles the administration has adopted in the absence of federal AI regulation: protect people, centre workers, and keep children safe. Marylanders, the governor said, should not have to wait for Washington to decide what the technology means for their jobs and families.
The same administration used the summit to tighten the state's posture on the physical side of AI. The executive order signed at the event establishes guardrails for transparent and accountable data center development, joining the reporting and ratepayer rules states have begun enacting as power demand from AI facilities climbs.
Benchmarks matter because legislatures are being asked to regulate a technology most have never measured. Maryland's survey will not settle the policy argument, but it gives the state's 2027 session something rare in AI debates: the state's own numbers, published, with the methodology available for argument.
The benchmark's value compounds with repetition. A first survey is a snapshot; a second, next year, becomes a trend line on adoption, productivity claims and workforce effects that the General Assembly can legislate against. Maryland has given itself the baseline, and the 2027 session will be the first test of whether evidence or anecdote drives the state's AI law.
The administration published the benchmark as a public document, inviting scrutiny of its sample and questions rather than treating it as a press asset. That choice, unusual in state technology policy, is the report's best credential.
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