Artificial intelligence

“This kind of technology will be transformative for humanity with potential for incredible strides in health and research, but it must be strictly regulated to protect American jobs and maintain trust amongst deepfakes and misinformation.”

“This cannot continue to be a race to the bottom as the richest people in society make robots that could ultimately end humanity, as they’re now talking about, while the rest of us have to deal with these hulking data centers in our backyard raising our utility rates and destroying our water. We can do better, it means regulation, and we needed that regulation yesterday, so the best we can do is tomorrow.”

“AI shouldn’t be able to deny you healthcare. It shouldn’t be able to deny you a job. It shouldn’t be able to fire you. It shouldn’t be able to fire a weapon. There are things that we should not be using AI to do, and we collectively have to decide that we need public oversight so that all of this technology is not being created for the interests of a few against the well-being of the many.”

“Further, the speed and lack of transparency with which these technologies are being developed opens the door to serious risks that powerful AI may fall into the wrong hands or escape human control altogether. That’s why I support legislation to create guardrails around when, how, and for what purposes AI is deployed.”

“And to address the security risks, I believe we must develop clear “rules of the road” for AI development that governs which hands this technology falls into and requires us to better test and understand the models being developed.”

“And while we want to protect America’s leadership in artificial intelligence, we are still grappling with how it will affect everything from how we work to how our children learn. We must protect Americans and establish clear, consistent laws for businesses.”

“Mandatory Interpretability Standards: It’s not enough to know what the AI said if we can’t understand why it said it. We need mandatory interpretability standards that clarify AI decisionmaking.”

“Mandatory Behavioral Red-Teaming: Independent adversarial testing for deception, manipulation, and coercion before deployment.”

“Independent Safety Testing Agency: We need an FDA-style agency that evaluates frontier models before deployment.”

“Biosecurity Requirements: Mandatory biosecurity red-teaming, coordinated with the CDC, NIH, and FEMA, with restrictions on models that meaningfully assist bioweapons development.”

“Self-acceleration Guardrails: AI used to build or improve other AI must face the same safety review as the models it produces. And limits must be placed on the capacity for agents to produce other agents.”

“Under Abdul’s plan we would establish an independent, FDA-style agency that evaluates the safety of AI models before their deployment.”

“We need to act, and we need to act now. So, we’ve also been calling for a pause on any of this frontier AI research until we can assure that this is being done safely.”

“At an absolute minimum, I’m calling for a pause in AI frontier development. We need to put an end to any further AI development until we have guardrails in place that ensure all risks to human safety are eliminated.”

“Pause Frontier AI Now: There’s no greater marker of how broken our political system is than how this has somehow not happened yet. Freeze the training and release of the most powerful AI systems until real safety rules and enforcement exists. Independent scientists must certify safety before the pause lifts, and new AI data centers wait too.”

“Completely Ban Artificial Superintelligence or Recursive Self-Improvement: Permanently prohibit any AI that outthinks humans across most tasks or could escape human control. Toward that end, we need to address the risk that this happens without our knowing it. That means banning recursive self-improvement, the process by which AI itself takes control of AI frontier research, creating a self-reinforcing doom loop that leads down the path of superintelligence. We also need to heed the blinking red lights: AI resisting shutdown, deceiving human overseers, or helping build weapons of mass destruction. Funding, hoarding or releasing such systems should be barred, and developers must prove their AI is safe, just like the government does for nuclear weapons or new drugs.”

“Give Us an AI Kill Switch: Developers must be able to slow, suspend, or shut down their most powerful systems, and cloud and data-center operators must cut access on a lawful order. Bipartisan legislation already backs part of this. There must be regular drills to prove it works, allowing regulators to protect Americans from dangerous AI systems gone rogue.”

“Mandatory Breach Reporting: Whenever an AI system escapes its test environment, gains access it was never given, or deceives its testers, the developer must be required to alert the government within 24 hours, and the public must get a summary. Regulators should receive the full logs, which no one should be able to delete, and hiding a breach should be a crime. To make breaches rare, frontier models must be built and tested on physically isolated, air-gapped systems, with independent teams trying to break them out first, and internal use should count as model release.”

“Independent Audits: Outside experts test frontier AI before release. Even leading AI companies now accept this.”

“Create an AI kill switch to protect Americans from dangerous AI systems gone rogue.”

“And to address the security risks, I believe we must develop clear “rules of the road” for AI development that governs which hands this technology falls into and requires us to better test and understand the models being developed.”

“This includes clear safety testing standards for frontier models; liability and incident reporting standards; compute controls, including “know your customer” requirements for compute providers; and the creation of an independent technical agency with real enforcement power, like to the Food & Drug Administration, for AI.”

“Independent Safety Testing Agency: We need an FDA-style agency that evaluates frontier models before deployment.”

“Under Abdul’s plan we would establish an independent, FDA-style agency that evaluates the safety of AI models before their deployment.”

“We also think that we need a public agency focused directly on the safety of AI, and there need to be AI no-go’s.”

“A Cabinet-Level, Independent AI Safety Agency: One agency with the power to inspect labs, block releases, and order a pause or command a shutdown, built to stand up to any billionaire. Danger found in testing should trigger action automatically, any exemption should be made public, a scientific board should be chosen outside the agency to manage its governance, and industry fees should fund it. Its officials should never be allowed to cash in on the companies they regulate.”

“Create a Cabinet-level independent AI watchdog agency.”

“This includes clear safety testing standards for frontier models; liability and incident reporting standards; compute controls, including “know your customer” requirements for compute providers; and the creation of an independent technical agency with real enforcement power, like to the Food & Drug Administration, for AI.”

“Severe Criminal Penalties for Corporate AI Abuse: Executives who recklessly break the rules should face criminal penalties with possible prison time. Companies should face the loss of their charters and assets. Lying to regulators should be a crime, executives must sign safety reports under penalty of perjury, and hiding a danger or retaliating against a whistleblower should carry real penalties too.”

“Establish severe criminal penalties for corporations and individuals abusing AI for malicious purposes.”

“This includes clear safety testing standards for frontier models; liability and incident reporting standards; compute controls, including “know your customer” requirements for compute providers; and the creation of an independent technical agency with real enforcement power, like to the Food & Drug Administration, for AI.”

“International Cooperation: We must re-engage the Bletchley framework and global AI Safety Institute network to advocate for a binding compute-threshold treaty with”

“Pursuit of a broad multilateral safety dialogue on catastrophic risk, modeled on Cold War nuclear verification cooperation.”

“International Public Cooperation and Governance Boards: We should negotiate a US-China treaty to pause and ban superintelligence, modeled on the Cold War deal in which Reagan and Gorbachev eliminated a class of nuclear missiles through inspections. A verification board would count chips and data centers, a scientific panel would share threat assessments, and a 24-hour hotline would flag incidents. Access to American chips and cloud services should be conditioned on signing and complying, and we should tighten chip export controls now.”

“No AI in Nuclear Command and Control: Humans, and only humans, should decide whether to use nuclear weapons. That is already US policy: Biden and Xi agreed to it in 2024. We must make it permanent, cover early warning and decision support, keep frontier AI out of the chain, and get every nuclear nation to sign on.”

“Hands Off State Laws: No weak federal law should block states from protecting their people more strongly.”

“And I oppose efforts to pre-empt state action without federal legislation in place.”

“Against data centers raising costs, guardrails on AI to protect our kids and jobs.”

“AI No-Gos: AI may not deny medical care, autonomously fire weapons, conduct warrantless surveillance, replace human oversight in life-or-death decisions, or make hiring or firing decisions.”

“Implementing AI No-Gos that ban denying medical care, autonomously firing weapons, conducting warrantless surveillance, or replacing human oversight in life-or-death decisions.”

“Establish public ownership of frontier AI labs and implement strict AI No-Gos, including a ban on autonomous weapons and warrantless surveillance.”

“This kind of technology will be transformative for humanity with potential for incredible strides in health and research, but it must be strictly regulated to protect American jobs and maintain trust amongst deepfakes and misinformation.”

“Today, U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed announced AI Under Democracy, a comprehensive AI policy platform that would bring the emerging technology into the hands of the people through democratic ownership and governance while ensuring responsible use.”

“Earlier this year, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act to transfer 50% equity from the largest AI companies into public hands. The El-Sayed campaign proposes to take that one step further to give Americans a seat at the table to determine the future of this transformational technology, protect American jobs, and establish guardrails to keep us safe and ultimately benefit everyone, not just tech CEOs.”

“Abdul is the only candidate in the Michigan Senate race to support public ownership of AI, and one of the only U.S. Senate candidates to do so nationwide. Notably, he is the first to propose public control of AI.”

“Placing AI under democratic control is a critical step to keeping our our democracy intact and our economy healthy.”

“Now, we’re putting forward a plan to bring AI Under Democracy – guardrails and a roadmap for AI development with one goal in mind: to bring the most powerful technology in human history under human democratic control.”

“Mandatory Public Benefit Charters: All frontier AI labs must be chartered as public benefit corporations, legally bound to balance public interest against profit.”

“Democratic Board Control: 50%+1 of board seats at frontier AI companies must be publicly appointed or democratically elected, not chosen by shareholders.”

“AI was built on our data and our labor; we should own a piece of it. Senator Bernie Sanders’s American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act would transfer 50% equity from the largest AI companies into public hands. I support that effort and propose to take it one step further because Americans deserve a seat at the table.”

“Under Abdul’s plan, a majority of the board seats of frontier AI companies must be either publicly appointed, or democratically elected.”

“[We] are seeing the pace of technological development outpace the pace of safety. If you had public oversight over this, in the form of democratically elected or appointed members of at least 50% of all of these public trust corporations, you would imagine that they’d act far more focused on what is in the public good rather than what is for the private benefit of a few billionaires.”

“Chartering all frontier AI companies as public benefit corporations with the majority of board members being democratically appointed, not chosen by shareholders”

“Divesting all frontier AI labs from the Big Tech giants like Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft. I called for public ownership—with 50% of equity owned by the American people—and an AI dividend.”

“Establish public ownership of frontier AI labs and implement strict AI No-Gos, including a ban on autonomous weapons and warrantless surveillance.”

“Severe Criminal Penalties for Corporate AI Abuse: Executives who recklessly break the rules should face criminal penalties with possible prison time. Companies should face the loss of their charters and assets. Lying to regulators should be a crime, executives must sign safety reports under penalty of perjury, and hiding a danger or retaliating against a whistleblower should carry real penalties too.”

“Protect Whistleblowers: Insiders who sound the alarm should get legal protection, back pay, and rewards.”

“Abdul’s plan also calls for creating AI whistleblower protections, implementing a national AI safety emergency plan, and requiring mandatory breach auditing of all AI systems.”

“AI No-Gos: AI may not deny medical care, autonomously fire weapons, conduct warrantless surveillance, replace human oversight in life-or-death decisions, or make hiring or firing decisions.”

“AI shouldn’t be able to deny you healthcare. It shouldn’t be able to deny you a job. It shouldn’t be able to fire you. It shouldn’t be able to fire a weapon. There are things that we should not be using AI to do, and we collectively have to decide that we need public oversight so that all of this technology is not being created for the interests of a few against the well-being of the many.”

“Implementing AI No-Gos that ban denying medical care, autonomously firing weapons, conducting warrantless surveillance, or replacing human oversight in life-or-death decisions.”

“Compute Controls and “Know Your Customer” Requirements: We don’t sell nuclear centrifuges without knowing the buyer. Similarly, chip access must be regulated and traceable on national and international markets.”

“International Public Cooperation and Governance Boards: We should negotiate a US-China treaty to pause and ban superintelligence, modeled on the Cold War deal in which Reagan and Gorbachev eliminated a class of nuclear missiles through inspections. A verification board would count chips and data centers, a scientific panel would share threat assessments, and a 24-hour hotline would flag incidents. Access to American chips and cloud services should be conditioned on signing and complying, and we should tighten chip export controls now.”

“This includes clear safety testing standards for frontier models; liability and incident reporting standards; compute controls, including “know your customer” requirements for compute providers; and the creation of an independent technical agency with real enforcement power, like to the Food & Drug Administration, for AI.”

“Artificial intelligence is here, brought to us by tech billionaire oligarchs who assure us it will make every human obsolete. They think they can replace critical human decisionmaking with machines. They’re wrong.”

“While more capable machines hold real promise in improving our lives, unregulated, they also threaten to steal our jobs, hijack our minds, worsen our isolation, and harm our children.”

“The point of our technology ought to be to increase the power we have over our lives—not to take it away. AI companies are terrified of regulation because many of them want to use their product to try and replace and control us.”