Dr. Abdul El-Sayed Announces AI Policy Platform: AI Under Democracy

MICHIGAN – 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. 

Tech giants have been developing AI models that can reason, think, read and write. 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. The CEOs funding big tech have said it themselves: AI could be disastrous and fatal without the proper guardrails. AI under Democracy would set those standards before it’s too late.

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.

“AI isn’t just any another tool. Even today, it holds the capacity to destroy our jobs, deny our healthcare, and surveil us. That power can’t sit solely within the control of a few billionaires,” said Abdul. “‘AI Under Democracy’ reorients AI development around the public good and sets guardrails for its uses so that we all benefit from its growth, rather than fear its deployment. Placing AI under democratic control is a critical step to keeping our our democracy intact and our economy healthy.”

“AI Under Democracy” contains 22 distinct policy proposals. The full policy proposal can be found here.

  • Mandatory Public Benefit Charters
  • “First, Do No Harm” Governance
  • Democratically-elected Board Control
  • No Revolving Doors for elected board members
  • Mandatory Divestiture from legacy Tech Companies
  • Support for Bernie Sanders’ American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act
  • Annual AI Dividend
  • Automation Levy
  • Education Investment
  • Expanded Unemployment Benefits and Wage Insurance
  • Small Business Revolving Loan Funding
  • Mandatory Interpretability Standards
  • Mandatory Behavioral Red-Teaming
  • Independent Safety Testing Agency
  • Biosecurity Requirements
  • Domestic authoritarianism prohibitions
  • Self-acceleration Guardrails
  • Mandatory Incident Reporting
  • Democracy Protections
  • Compute Controls and “Know Your Customer” Requirements
  • AI No-Gos
  • International Cooperation

In January, Abdul released his “Terms of Engagement” for data center construction to address another major aspect of AI’s rapid expansion and a point of contention in communities across Michigan. The policy would put conditions on construction, including local job guarantees from the corporations who fund them, stringent energy regulations that ensure utility companies can’t hike rates for Michiganders, and environmental protections that stop corporate polluters in their tracks.

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