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AI on Our Terms
Owning the most powerful technology in human history does not give a company the right to own humanity itself—or put our democracy in danger.
AI is already one of the most powerful tools humans have ever built, and its impacts might soon outrun our best and worst imaginations. The people in power right now owe something to every generation that follows: set the rules that protect us from its harms, and be clear about the society we want AI to make possible.
AI is several different issues wrapped into one. While Silicon Valley and Washington treat AI as a distinct phenomenon, most Americans experience it as an accelerant of forces we have faced for years—the automation of our jobs, the dopamine and screen addiction of our kids, and the loss of our privacy. Add in a surge in state surveillance, climate change, the concentration of wealth and power in fewer unaccountable hands, and the erosion of our common humanity.
America needs a national strategy on AI—in fact, an international strategy—and we need it fast.
If used for the common good, AI can accelerate breakthroughs in medicine, clean energy and conservation, and even manage your inbox. But the current leadership in Washington has not done the job. Worse, they are trying to stop red states and blue states from protecting their own people through a disastrous policy known as federal preemption, which would block states from setting guardrails and liability on AI even when Washington has put nothing in their place. The people building AI are begging to be regulated. Washington's answer is to block the states from doing it.
The clearest moral leadership so far has come from Pope Leo. In the first major letter of his papacy, he wrote: “Technology is never neutral. It takes on the character of the people who build it, pay for it, and write the rules for it.”
The question is who decides. Big Tech wants the answer to be whoever spends the most money. They have amassed a war chest of over $100 million to buy the midterm elections. They have gone after candidates with the courage to demand AI safety, and they are bankrolling candidates who promise them a blank check through federal preemption. That is not right, and it is not inevitable.
Tom's Accomplishments on the issue
Why You Can Trust Tom
Tom was a senior fellow at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, working on policies to prevent harm and maximize human benefits from the new frontiers of AI. He has said repeatedly that “it is an urgent and top priority to establish federal guardrails and liability, ideally on a bipartisan basis, to protect people from the most powerful product humans have ever created.”
He refuses donations from corporate PACs and lobbyists and was one of the founding signatories of the pledge to refuse money from Big Tech Super PACs.
Tom has a track record of standing up to powerful corporate lobbies, even when it costs him politically. He cast a deciding vote to pass the Affordable Care Act despite threats from the insurance industry to ensure his defeat.
When Tom gets to washington
Tom's Action Plan
National ground rules, guardrails, and goals for AI that minimize existential risks and incentivize full human employment. This includes the need for national safety standards and opposition to any effort to preempt state laws, currently passed by both red and blue states, to protect people from the harms of AI.
Full human employment and a seat at the table for workers. Over half of all American jobs could be eliminated or “disrupted” in a matter of years. Tom supports a bold, bipartisan national agenda to protect and create human jobs — jobs that pay enough to support a family without going into debt and give you a reason to be proud at the end of the day. Our 20th century tax code and health care system reward companies for automating people out of work. Tom will fight to rewrite them so they reward companies for hiring people and paying them more.
Protect our kids. Nearly nine in ten kids now use AI, and more than four in ten say no parent has ever talked with them about AI safety. Tom will put the burden where it belongs – on the companies designing and profiting from products – and require age limits, clear use warnings, and liability for reasonably predictable harms.
Protect elections. Today, anyone in this country or anywhere in the world can download a free app that puts words in the mouth of a candidate. It is already happening and it is going to get worse. If an ad was made with AI, it should say so. If someone fakes a candidate's voice, the platforms should take it down fast or pay significant penalties. And it is time to end the deluge of dark money into our politics and end Citizens United.
Serve citizens, don't score them. No computer denying your benefits, no computer deciding a prison sentence, no machine deciding who gets care. And no drone decides who gets killed. A person with a name answers for every government decision that touches your life.