Embarking on a Democratic AI Opportunity Agenda

Over the past few months, a handful of Democratic policymakers have staked out an anti-AI resistance on the left – embracing ideas ranging from data center moratoria, to nationalizing frontier AI labs, to taxing AI innovation.

These Democrats have staked out a strategy of halting AI development. But the reality is that many Democratic policymakers are more interested in harnessing AI to create more opportunity, more access, and more justice. They aren’t sure about the best way to do it.

We Democrats are the party of embracing technology to improve society, not stopping it. We’re the party of Al Gore helping lay the groundwork for the Internet, of Bill Clinton helping connect classrooms, of Barack Obama using technology to modernize government. Our party’s history includes a long list of leaders stepping up in uncertain times to make sure that more people benefit from technological progress.

But the public discourse around AI policy has become too small and too dark.

On one side, some AI boosters focus strictly on deployment timelines and the need to innovate quickly with little to no regulation. This approach inadvertently overlooks the practical realities of how these tools can actually augment human capability or at worst, lead to displacement with no safety net.

On the other side, some critics are bogged down by existential anxieties and defensive policy postures that treat technological progress as an inherent threat to working people, rather than an opportunity for shared growth. This side often argues from an unstated assumption that our future is inevitable.

Like most things, the truth and possibility lies somewhere in between. AI can be broadly beneficial to society, but policymakers need to take steps to make sure that happens.

Democrats Leading on AI Opportunity

Fortunately, some Democrats are not waiting for a perfect consensus; they are already working through the hard tradeoffs in public and taking on the governance challenge head-on.

Rep. Ted Lieu brought his technical fluency and a focus on guardrails in his leadership of the House Bipartisan Taskforce on AI in 2024 and brings his expertise in his current role as Co-Chair of the Democratic Commission on AI and the Innovation Economy. Rep. Lori Trahan has taken on a leadership role in forging a bipartisan AI governance legislation focusing on frontier model safety, accountability, and protecting workers. And Rep. Sam Liccardo proposes using evolving federal safety standards and liability incentives to reward safer AI development without slowing innovation.

There is no fully settled or unified Democratic party AI doctrine, but we see the beginning of something more useful: a Democratic AI agenda that is pragmatic, pro-worker, pro-innovation, and serious about accountability. That is exactly the posture this moment requires.

With Democrats poised to make potential gains in Congress this November, our party must seize the opportunity to craft a policy that expands AI opportunity for all Americans. The policy choices we make today will not just regulate a new suite of software; they will shape opportunities for generations to come. With the right governance, political investments, and regulatory structures in place, AI can be a middle-class project.

The Democratic Instinct: Pragmatic Optimism with a Backbone

Democratic lawmakers don’t need to reinvent their core values to meet this moment – they just need to apply them. In fact, Democrats have most often led regulation when old laws stopped fitting new realities: whether that meant dealing with growing mass unemployment, the lack of civil rights in a national economy, a developing telecommunications ecosystem, or a nascent internet ecosystem.

Most school-aged children can cite President Franklin D. Roosevelt who led our nation out of the Great Depression or President Lyndon B. Johnson who signed the historic Civil Rights Act after speaking out against the ills of segregation, employment discrimination, and state-level voter suppression. The latter’s lasting effect continues to be the basis for how many seek justice against inequitable and unfair impacts.

We can also look back to the “Atari Democrats” of the 1980s, who recognized that the transition to a high-tech, information-based economy was inevitable. They understood that the role of government was to facilitate the microchip revolution with smart governance and to ensure that American workers were educated, equipped, and empowered to lead it. For them, economic growth and labor protections were not mutually exclusive—they were codependent.

And Democratic leaders have led the nation through tectonic economic shifts by regulating with a backbone while fostering innovation. President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the first major overhaul of U.S. communications law in 62 years, that fostered market competition and deregulated the U.S. broadcasting and telecommunications industries. That same year, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) co-authored a provision that still protects the freedom of expression of U.S.-based users online by protecting the intermediaries we rely on – the subsequent passed law is credited for the survival of a burgeoning internet.

Previewing the Path Forward

To capture this opportunity, we will release over the coming months a new Democratic AI Opportunity Agenda: a series of policy proposals to re-focus our party on AI policies that create more economic, personal, and social opportunity for Americans.

Every few weeks on this substack, we plan to unveil a policy proposal laying out our vision for a pragmatic Democratic AI policy agenda. Our hope is to help Democratic lawmakers who seek to actively shape AI innovation rather than let it shape us.

These essays will cover a range of topics within the AI innovation discourse, from what our workforce looks like in this transformative era, to how data center development can be community-centered, to what expanded access to AI can look like, to what smart governance looks like to crack down on AI abuse – and many others.

All of our proposals will reflect four core values:

• Empowering People

  • Ensuring workers, students, families, and small businesses have the skills and tools to benefit from AI rather than be acted upon by it

• Market Balance

  • Promoting innovation and competition while preventing a handful of firms from capturing all the gains

• Proactive Trust

  • Setting clear rules, enforcing accountability, and confronting abuses before they erode public confidence

• The Public Good

  • Using AI to strengthen public institutions, improve services, and restore trust in public bodies

We will highlight pending or potential legislation as models Democratic leaders can look to, as well as lay out what proactive ideas to pursue and what legislative pitfalls to avoid. In some cases, legislation may not exist and we will focus on providing an outline for what potential policy proposals could look like.

Our Future is not Set in Stone

At its heart, this series is an invitation to look at the future of AI with pragmatic optimism rather than apprehension. The path forward has not been set in stone. Rather than stepping back out of uncertainty, this is a prime moment for thoughtful, forward-looking leadership.

By leaning into the core values of opportunity and fairness, we have the unique chance to channel the AI technological wave to support a stronger, more resilient middle class. We believe it’s possible to have an AI landscape where innovation thrives, the workforce is empowered, and the benefits of progress are shared across our society.