Getting the Balance Right with Artificial Intelligence

When voters talk to me about AI in this district, I hear a version of the same thing: nobody asked us. It showed up in our kids' phones, in the hiring process, in our electric bills, and there's no one in charge of it. That worry isn't irrational and it isn't anti-technology. It's what people feel when something this big moves this fast and the rules are nowhere in sight. It’s important that the United States continue leading the world in AI development, but we need to make sure it’s developed safely and works for people, not just tech companies and billionaires.

As a Member of Congress, my job will be to make sure AI innovation means more money in your pocket, not less.

We should do everything we can to get the benefits of AI – from new and faster cures for disease to less time wasted – without massive lay-offs, letting ourselves be helpless in the face of algorithms that addict our kids to AI-created content that makes it hard to know truth from lies, or a data center buildout that drives up electricity costs for families. We need guardrails. And we need to protect workers. The people I hear this from most are in their forties and fifties, good at what they do, quietly wondering whether the job they trained for will exist in five years. Nobody has given them a straight answer. They deserve one.

We also need to make sure that we guard against the risks that AI will pose to our national security, and that our tax code is fair so that the AI boom doesn’t just supercharge wealth concentration at the top, but instead helps us make new investments in people, in jobs, in infrastructure, in education, and in communities.

In Congress, I’ll always evaluate AI policy proposals with these values in mind.

Congress should act quickly to establish a federal framework for AI that includes clear standards for transparency and testing. That will require increased investment in the Center for AI Standards and Innovation to ensure that the federal government has the capacity to test & evaluate models for safety and alignment.

Connecticut has recently enacted landmark legislation to protect our kids, workers, and whistleblowers. Congress should build on these policies.

Congress should also take action to maintain our international lead in AI development, because winning the AI race doesn't mean running it without rules, it means being the country that writes them. I spent years in Obama’s Treasury Department building the Iran sanctions program and chasing terrorist financing, and I deployed to Afghanistan as a Navy intelligence officer. I know what it looks like when a capability outruns the rules around it. This is where we are with frontier AI right now, which is why we need to strengthen our export controls so advanced computer chips don’t fall into the wrong hands. And we need to treat the theft of frontier AI models like a national security threat by requiring labs to strengthen their security to government-grade standards.

I hear it from parents everywhere I go, and there's a particular kind of dread in it: something is talking to your kid all day and you have no idea what it's saying. No parent should have to be a software engineer to keep their child safe. We’ve watched as social media has harmed a generation of kids’ mental health, and we can’t let the same happen with AI chatbots. I’d be proud to join Sen. Blumenthal in pushing for the GUARD Act, which would bar minors from accessing chatbots and mandate disclosure that chatbots aren’t humans or licensed professionals. We cannot allow AI companies to put their bottom lines before kids’ wellbeing.

We also have got to make sure that we’re prepared for the way that AI will transform our economy. I ran a city that lived through what happens when the economy changes and nobody plans for it. Hartford did not get hollowed out overnight. It got hollowed out because the people making decisions decided the workers who got left behind were somebody else’s problem. I am not going to sit in Congress and watch that happen again on a national scale and call it innovation.