Alex Bores is a member of the New York State Assembly representing the 73rd Assembly District in Manhattan and a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in New York's 12th Congressional District (Source: assembly.state.ny.us) (Source: alexbores.nyc). He was the lead Assembly sponsor of the Responsible AI Safety and Education (RAISE) Act, a state AI-safety law signed in December 2025 (Source: governor.ny.gov). He has also proposed an "AI dividend" intended to redistribute AI-generated wealth through equity participation in frontier labs and progressive taxation on AI consumption. The OpenAI-backed Leading the Future super PAC targeted his positioning, and he lost the June 23, 2026 Democratic primary for the 12th District (Source: politico.com). In September 2026 he launched the AI-policy nonprofit Who Decides (Source: fortune.com).
Background
Bores describes himself as a fifth-generation New Yorker who was born and raised in the 12th Congressional District and attended New York City public schools, including Hunter College High School (Source: alexbores.nyc). He holds a degree in computer science and, according to his campaign, is the first Democrat elected in New York State at any level to hold a computer-science degree (Source: alexbores.nyc); his LinkedIn profile lists him as a computer engineer who studied at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Source: linkedin.com).
Before entering elected office, Bores worked as an engineer at the data-analytics company Palantir. According to NOTUS, he is a former Palantir engineer (Source: notus.org); his campaign states that he resigned from a company in protest when it sought to use its technology to target immigrants for deportation (Source: alexbores.nyc).
Roles
Bores serves in the New York State Assembly representing the 73rd District (Source: assembly.state.ny.us). His campaign states that he has passed 30 bills through the State Assembly, on subjects including a ban on hidden "junk" fees, expanded healthcare access, and restrictions on telemarketing scams, and that he secured more than $50.1 million for district organizations in 2025; it also cites recognition by the Center for Effective Lawmaking as the most effective new legislator from New York City (Source: alexbores.nyc). TIME magazine named him to its list of the 100 most influential people in AI (Source: alexbores.nyc).
Bores ran in the Democratic primary for U.S. House in New York's 12th District (Source: ballotpedia.org). According to NOTUS, he sought the seat of retiring Representative Jerry Nadler (Source: notus.org). He narrowly lost the June 23, 2026 primary (Source: politico.com). Outside spending in the race topped $40 million, which made it the most expensive House primary of the cycle (Source: fortune.com).
The RAISE Act
Bores was the Assembly sponsor of the Responsible AI Safety and Education (RAISE) Act (S6953B / A6453B), co-sponsored with State Senator Andrew Gounardes. The bill passed both houses of the New York State Legislature and, according to the Assembly's announcement, drew bipartisan support (Source: assembly.state.ny.us). Governor Kathy Hochul signed it on December 19, 2025 (Source: governor.ny.gov).
As described in the Assembly's announcement, the RAISE Act applies only to the largest AI developers — companies that have spent over $100 million in computational resources to train advanced models — and requires them to write, publish, and follow safety and security protocols and risk evaluations covering severe risks such as assistance with biological weapons or large-scale automated criminal activity; it requires companies not to release models that create an unreasonable risk of critical harm, requires disclosure of serious incidents (such as theft of a dangerous model or dangerous model behavior), and authorizes the New York State Attorney General to bring civil penalties against large AI companies that fail to meet these standards (Source: assembly.state.ny.us). In the announcement, Bores characterized the law as putting "light-touch requirements on only the largest developers" while keeping "New Yorkers safe," and cited polling that 84% of New Yorkers supported the bill (Source: assembly.state.ny.us). The law is further described as part of a broader state-AI-regulation landscape; see RAISE Act for detailed provisions.
Other AI legislation
Bores introduced Assembly Bill A8833, the Understanding Artificial Intelligence Act, on June 9, 2025 with co-sponsor Tony Simone. It would add article 45-A to the general business law, imposing strict liability on developers of "covered models" — those trained above 10^26 operations at a cost exceeding $100 million — for injuries to non-users caused by model conduct that would be negligent, an intentional tort, or a crime if an adult human of sound mind engaged in it. The bill creates a rebuttable presumption that the system satisfied the relevant mental state and provides that "it shall not be a defense that artificial intelligence systems are incapable of having mental states" (New York A8833 — Understanding Artificial Intelligence Act (bill text)). It was referred to the Assembly Committee on Science and Technology and re-referred there on January 7, 2026, and has not advanced. See New York A8833 — Understanding Artificial Intelligence Act.
A8833 predates the RAISE Act's signing and takes a different governance approach — downstream liability for harms caused, rather than upstream transparency and safety-protocol obligations.
Positions and statements
Bores has unveiled an AI dividend proposal that would redistribute AI-generated wealth via equity participation in frontier labs and apply progressive taxation on AI consumption. The proposal sits in the same conceptual family as broader AI-dividend proposals, including universal basic income variants, Universal Basic Capital, and data-dividend ideas, but differs in proposing equity participation rather than purely tax-and-transfer mechanisms.
He appeared on The Ezra Klein Show on April 22, 2026, where he articulated an AI-disruption thesis centered on the possibility of broad automation, saying: "I would love to understand why you think we're not headed to a world of full automation, because it's tough for me [to know] where that stops once we start on it." (Source: washingtonpost.com)
In an interview with NOTUS, Bores argued that AI regulation need not slow innovation, framing the debate as between "one side saying, 'No one should regulate this at all' and another side saying 'Hey, I want Americans to have a voice in how the most important and fastest-developing technology of our time comes into existence'" (Source: notus.org). He told NOTUS that he expected AI to "get even more salient" as a political issue as it affects jobs, costs tied to data centers, and personal interactions with the technology (Source: notus.org). If elected, he has said he wants to create additional federal safety regulations covering AI development, chatbots, and data centers (Source: notus.org).
Launching Who Decides, Bores said the aim was to "give the American people a say in how AI develops," arguing that on AI "it's not even just the answers that are up for grabs, but even the questions that are being asked are up for grabs." He said that "80% of Americans want there to be more regulation on AI, and that's across parties"; independent polling cited alongside his remarks, the February–March 2026 Annenberg Public Policy Center survey, found 65% saying the government has done "too little" to regulate AI. He described the RAISE Act as having been opposed by "a small subset of Silicon Valley that thinks there should be no regulation on AI whatsoever," said it "was, arguably still is, the strongest AI safety bill in the country" even though, on the same account, third-party audits and whistleblower protections were stripped before passage, and said he expects Illinois and Massachusetts to surpass it. Asked about the reading that the federal frontier-AI bill from Senators Ted Cruz, Amy Klobuchar and John Thune is Cruz's earlier state-preemption effort in federal form, he said "Spot on," adding: "It's people trying to use this momentum and this crisis to shut down the real power people have to regulate" (Source: fortune.com). See Public Opinion on AI.
The next day, September 16, 2026, Bores signed, as "New York State Assemblyman, District 73," a letter led by Americans for Responsible Innovation to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Senate. He is the first of five individual signatories, alongside 20 organizations. "We strongly request that any AI regulatory framework empower the government, not AI companies, to set mandatory, binding, and enforceable safety standards for advanced AI," the letter states; it also asks that auditing of AI models be "both mandatory and conducted independently," and that Congress set a floor that preserves states' authority to regulate further rather than "eliminate strong state laws in exchange for weaker federal standards." The other individual signatories are Malo Bourgon of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, Daniel Kokotajlo of the AI Futures Project, Girish Sastry of Guidelight and Alexander Turner, listed as an AI researcher; organizational signatories include Encode AI, the Alliance for Secure AI, Issue One, the Institute for Family Studies, Consumer Reports and Public Citizen (Senate coalition letter on redlines for AI safety legislation (Americans for Responsible Innovation, September 2026)). The letter names no bill; the Washington Post, which counted "19 advocacy groups" with AI researchers, reported it as a campaign to reject the framework being developed by Thune and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and only the summary and quoted excerpts of that account were retrievable (Source: washingtonpost.com). See Coordinated slowdown proposals compared.
Super PAC opposition and support
The OpenAI-backed Leading the Future super PAC has targeted Bores's positioning. According to NOTUS, Bores was the first target of Leading the Future, which released an advertisement against him over his support for AI regulation, and the network — backed by donors including Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman — pledged to spend over $100 million in the 2026 midterm elections (Source: notus.org). Bores's campaign states that three of President Trump's largest donors created a super PAC spending $10 million to oppose him (Source: alexbores.nyc). Bores told NOTUS that the planned spending was "outsized but also unsurprising," describing it as comparable to a venture-capital investment for the backers because "their returns could be trillions" (Source: notus.org).
NOTUS reported that a counterpart network of super PACs called Public First, founded by former Democratic congressman Brad Carson, pledged $50 million to support candidates favoring AI regulation from both parties (Source: notus.org). Carson told NOTUS that the pro-regulation side held an advantage in public sentiment, citing polling that found broad public support for prioritizing AI safety (Source: notus.org).
Post-primary accounts give different figures for the spending. Leading the Future spent $8 million to defeat Bores, with pro-regulation super PACs including roughly $12 million attributed to Anthropic-linked Public First Action outspending it by more than two to one (Source: politico.com). A September 2026 account puts Leading the Future's spending against him at more than $7.6 million, describes Public First Action, backed by $20 million from Anthropic, as spending in his support, and puts total outside money in the race above $40 million (Source: fortune.com).
In the same week as the Ezra Klein appearance, on April 24, 2026, The Midas Project reported that the AI-generated site "The Wire by Acutus" — which publishes articles attacking AI-industry critics — appears to be funded by Leading the Future. (Source: x.com)
Who Decides
Bores launched Who Decides, a nonprofit, on September 15, 2026 with his former chief of staff Anna Myers, less than three months after his primary loss, which the launch coverage presents as part of the group's origin. The group had raised $10 million at launch and aims to raise $20 million more in 2027, for $30 million ahead of 2028. Bores said it is intended to unite the AI advocacy organizations Democrats already trust, help them build their own agendas rather than handing them one, and establish "a shared floor of an agenda on things that we all want to see good done." It is working through organizations already active in 11 battleground states, and Bores said it is not trying to outspend Leading the Future or Build American AI. He said outreach accelerated after Jacob Coxon's resignation from Anthropic the previous week, and that everyone who had reached out so far was a Democrat, though he was open to people of any political ideology (Source: fortune.com).
Relationships
- related: Who Decides (nonprofit) — nonprofit he co-founded in September 2026
- related: Coordinated slowdown proposals compared, John Thune, Americans for Responsible Innovation (ARI) — individual signatory of the September 16, 2026 Senate coalition letter, which the Washington Post reported as opposing the Thune–Klobuchar framework
- related: Public First Action (super PAC)
- related: AI Dividends (Universal Basic Capital, Digital Dividend, Global Dividend), Universal Basic Capital, AI Labor Disruption, Leading the Future (super PAC), AI Political Bias, New York RAISE Act, Palantir Technologies