8 Days to Go: Regulating AI
With just eight days until the primary, I am using each day to discuss an issue I have highlighted on the campaign trail. For Day 8, I am highlighting the need to regulate AI before it’s too late.
You can’t pay for parking, get into a movie, or do basic tasks without your phone. AI is accelerating this problem: it is being used to deny people healthcare, replace workers, surveil communities, and make military decisions that should require human judgment.
Our lives have become beholden to the priorities and profits of technology corporations, and we never had a say in it.
Whether we like it or not, AI is here to stay. But we can take several steps to regulate AI and hold powerful tech companies accountable now, before they gain even more control over our lives.
AI is being used to deny people healthcare, replace workers, surveil communities, and make military decisions that should require human judgment. And to make matters worse, the companies building these systems have amassed so much power that they can pay for whatever laws they want.
We’ve seen this story before: Social media companies were allowed to grow for twenty years without any meaningful regulation, and we’re just now starting to see accountability for these companies decades after they’ve been allowed to wreak havoc on our public health and democracy.
We know the dangers of AI, and we can take action now to prevent harms from occurring in the first place rather than waiting twenty years for class action lawsuits to deliver justice. But here’s the problem: Shady AI super PACs are pouring millions of dollars into races across the country to elect politicians who will serve their interests, not those of the American people.
That’s why we need lawmakers in Congress who will reject corporate PAC money and fight for comprehensive AI regulation that protects workers, patients, and consumers.
That means prohibiting AI in the nuclear weapons program, requiring transparency when AI is used to make decisions about people’s healthcare or employment, enacting real data privacy protections, and ensuring that Congress has meaningful oversight before these technologies are deployed in ways that affect people’s lives.
It means putting a moratorium on data center construction until we have legislation that requires these companies to address and offset the impact of new data centers on public health, the environment, and energy prices.
And it means breaking up these monopolies so that a few giant tech companies that are too big to fail don’t have complete control over every aspect of our lives.
I refuse to surrender to Big Tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. That’s why I don’t pay to advertise on their platforms or spend my time chasing likes and clicks on their platforms. And it’s why I’m putting regulating the tech industry at the top of my agenda in Congress.
We’re in a race for our future. Tech companies are moving fast, but democracy will prevail.
