10 AI policies

It’s Boston Tech Week. I was on a panel about AI. (All the panels are about AI, I’m sure.) Three-and-a-half years ago I was the first Member of Congress to give a speech drafted by AI, in order to call attention to the fast-moving technology. Since then, I’ve stayed deeply engaged as a member of the primary committee of jurisdiction over AI.

Discussing AI at The Washington Post Live event: “Building America: Powering the AI Age” in February 2026.

I’m not going to offer here grand thoughts about AI. Smarter people on the Internet are writing about that. What I will offer instead are 10 no-regret policies that Democrats should press for right now. Uncertainty is not an excuse for inaction.

1. Amend the tax code in favor of labor over capital. This gives the labor market a longer runway to adjust and helps reverse a decades-long trend of returns to capital outpacing returns to labor.

• Levy social media corporations’ digital advertising revenue & invest the proceeds into K-12 education & trade schools. Social media monetizes humans’ attention spans; that money should be invested back into humans’ cognitive & career development

• Implement a token tax and use the proceeds to fund a reduction in payroll taxes. This puts a federal finger on the scale for hiring humans over robots

• Raise capital gains taxes, including by eliminating the step-up in basis for wealthy heirs, and use the proceeds to lower income taxes

2. Establish a collective management organization (CMO) for content creators, modeled off music rights-and-royalty CMOs, through which creators (e.g. writers, scientists, reviewers) are reimbursed by AI companies according to how the content helps train new models.

3. Put in place a social media age-limit of 16 years old and impose a stringent duty of care onto the social media platforms. They’ve done enough damage, already. Now they are pushing AI companion bots onto 12-year-olds.

4. Launch a national effort to re-examine and share best practices on technology’s role in K-12 pedagogy and curriculum. Where are screens in schools just spreading slop? Where could agentic tutoring help children learn phonics, algebra, or reading for comprehension? There are bad and good uses of technology. Teachers already have many of these insights; we need to listen better.

5. Use upcoming Medicaid 1115 waiver negotiations to clinically incorporate AI. 1115 waivers are how states negotiate their Medicaid programs with the federal government. It’s a big deal – Medicaid is a third of the Bay State’s budget, for example. With costs spiraling, clinicians and policy-makers should work together to incorporate AI for diagnosis, decision-support, documentation and delivery of care. Again, Massachusetts could lead the way in showing how health care can metabolize AI to take out costs while improving quality of care.

6. Take advantage of hyperscalers’ energy demand to pull nuclear power into investability. This is already happening, but federal guidance and permitting reform would help nuclear pencil out, which is critical to American energy sovereignty & affordability and to climate action.

7. Start pilots for self-driving cars, trucks, and transit. States and cities should work with the AV industry and affected workers to reduce congestion, manage the curb, and fund transportation infrastructure via targeted deployments.

8. Speed up the scale-up of lessons learned from Ukraine’s drone & counter-drone tactics. The United States must deploy land, sea, and air autonomous systems to the Indo-Pacific. Massachusetts has a big opportunity to be a dominant hub for maritime robotics, especially.

9. Require the National Institute of Standards & Technology to establish standards for documentation and data-hygiene for AI models. Objectives should include improving auditability and facilitating productive use in messier fields like biology.

10. Un-DOGE the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) so that it can resume critical work in forging public-private partnerships to cyber-protect critical infrastructure like telecommunications, water utilities, and the electric grid.