What to know, before reading the rest

1. South Carolina is doing real AI work, across more institutions than the public conversation reflects.

South Carolina has substantive AI work underway across its universities, its manufacturing base, its hospitals, its farms, its ports, its state government, and a growing startup community. The University of South Carolina runs an Artificial Intelligence Institute. Clemson's School of Computing has been building AI capacity for years and houses the joint Clemson–MUSC AI Hub. The Medical University of South Carolina hired a Chief AI Officer in late 2025 and operates a Center for AI. The South Carolina Research Authority has published a state-level AI strategy and convenes the AI Leadership Hub. ADAPT in SC is running statewide workforce-readiness conversations. The state government is standing up an AI Center of Excellence. The 2025 SC AI Symposium drew industry, government, and academic leaders into the same room for a full day. The work is real. It is also scattered. None of these institutions has a clear view of what the others are doing — which is why this report exists.

2. South Carolina is becoming a data-center hotspot — and the energy question is now the most consequential infrastructure question facing the state in a generation.

Meta is building an $800 million AI data center in Orangeburg County, anchored to a new 100-megawatt solar farm. A separate $2.8 billion computing center ("Moc-1") is proposed in Spartanburg County, designed to generate its own electricity on-site. Santee Cooper, the state-owned utility, has voted to impose an experimental rate structure on customers above 50 megawatts — a four-year pilot designed to keep residential and small-business customers from subsidizing the state's data-center growth. The state is also studying revival of the V.C. Summer nuclear project, idle since 2017, partly in response to AI-driven baseload demand. National analysts project AI data centers could account for as much as 44% of U.S. electricity load growth by 2028; how South Carolina handles its share — including transparency on siting, water use, and ratepayer impact — will shape the state's economic trajectory for the next decade. Chapter 5 lays out the picture.

3. The state's manufacturing base is already running on AI.

BMW Manufacturing in Spartanburg has been deploying AI in its body shop since at least 2023 — placing up to 400 studs per car, 500,000 daily across X-model production, with AI-enabled correction lasers reducing error rates roughly fivefold. Beginning in 2024, the plant has been piloting general-purpose humanoid robots from Figure AI, in what amounts to one of the most-watched applied robotics programs in U.S. manufacturing. Boeing's South Carolina complex employs more than 5,000 people across 1.2 million square feet, with AI-augmented inspection, simulation, and supply-chain operations increasingly woven into 787 assembly and the on-site research and engineering center. Volvo, Mercedes-Benz Vans, Michelin, and 400-plus aerospace and aviation firms across the state add depth to a manufacturing economy that is already AI-active in ways most states aspire to. Chapter 3 walks through the deployments by sector.

4. The 126th General Assembly already has at least five AI-specific bills in committee — substantially more legislative activity than is generally appreciated.

Five substantive AI bills (and two AI-related resolutions) are currently working through the General Assembly, spanning four high-stakes use cases. H.5253 (AI in Education) would establish opt-in parental consent for AI tools in K–12 schools, require annual disclosure of AI vendors and student-data practices, prohibit AI from replacing licensed teachers in core instruction, and bar systems that profile students by political or religious belief. S.443 (Health Claims & AI) would prohibit health insurers from making coverage decisions solely on the basis of AI tools, requiring licensed clinician oversight of any prior-authorization or concurrent-care denial that uses an automated decision system. S.963 (AI Consumer Protection) would create a Consumer Protections in Interactions with Artificial Intelligence Systems Act, prohibiting algorithmic discrimination from "high-risk" AI systems. Two chatbot bills — H.5138 (Chatbot Protection Act) and S.1037 (Protecting Children from Chatbots Act) — would require disclosure, affirmative consent, dark-pattern restrictions, age verification, and minor-protection standards for entities deploying AI chatbots. H.5085 (designating "AI Week" and encouraging AI literacy) and S.225 (advocating open-source decentralized AI policy) round out the picture. Each substantive bill requires meaningful human oversight as a structural principle. The state's broader policy posture is mapped in Chapter 6.

5. The connective tissue between SC's AI institutions is thin — and that is the most actionable problem in the picture.

Universities, agencies, hospitals, manufacturers, and convening organizations are each doing real work, but most do not have a regular forum where their leads compare notes. There is no public AI deployment registry for state and local government. There is no shared AI literacy curriculum for legislators, school boards, or small-business owners. There is no statewide standard for clinical AI deployment. There is no industry-academic consortium tying the manufacturing base to the universities' AI capacity. Each of these is buildable. Chapter 8 lays out specific, non-prescriptive recommendations for what would help.