A policy agenda published by Senator Edward J. Markey.
Framing
The agenda opens by granting the benefit case before inverting its rhetoric: "At its best, AI can help speed scientific discovery, produce new innovations, and expand access to tools that once belonged only to the most powerful institutions. Yet, even as the benefits of AI have been pitched as nearly limitless, the risks — to kids, workers, the planet, our health, and our communities — are nearly limitless as well."
Its argument for urgency is that the harms are present rather than prospective: "Artificial intelligence is no longer a future challenge. It is already shaping how children learn and socialize, how workers are hired and managed, how patients receive care, how communities use energy and water, and how companies make decis[ions]."
The stated obligation: "policymakers have a responsibility to address these risks before they take root. A technology this influential must serve the public interest, not exploit Americans for private profit. We don't have time to waste."
The five named risk domains — children, workers, environment, health, communities — track the areas of active state and federal legislative activity, and are notably not the catastrophic-risk categories that frontier-lab frameworks organize around.
Relationships
- related: Ed Markey — the agenda's author
- related: State-Level AI Regulation, AI Labor Disruption, Companion Chatbot Harms — Cross-Cutting Analysis, AI Data Centers