ICYMI: Kelly’s New AI Bill Puts American Workers First

“We could have a lot of job disruption , and for that we need a plan. It seems that everybody understands that except possibly the president and the people around him.” In case you missed it, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly joined CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360º to highlight the urgent need to act on AI to make sure it benefits all Americans, not just big companies. Kelly discussed his Make AI Work for Americans Act , legislation he will introduce Thursday to help ensure working Americans benefit from the changing economy. Sen. Kelly speaks to Anderson Cooper. Watch the full conversation here . See key excerpts below: On why we need to act on AI now… “Democrats, Republicans, independents all think that this is getting to the point where we need to act and act soon. Even the CEOs of the AI companies, the frontier or the big companies that create these large language models, are asking for regulation. “I think this is a competition with the Chinese, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have guardrails in place… As a former test pilot and astronaut, even the stuff that’s low probability with a catastrophic result, you got to come up with some mitigation for that and try to prevent it from happening. And I think about this the same way, but for some reason, and I don’t quite understand it yet, the president just wants us to go full speed, as fast as we possibly can, and don’t consider the negative side of this. Hey, I want this to work. I think there’s huge benefits for the American people. But at this point, especially on the job loss piece of this, I want to see these Big Tech companies chip in and I want to see the government put in the guardrails in place so we don’t have a catastrophic outcome.” On how his AI Horizon fund works… “The centerpiece of this is the AI Horizon Fund, which will collect money from Big Tech in three ways with three different taxes: a usage tax, a digital advertising tax, and what’s essentially an excess profits tax. And then that revenue can be applied so people who lose their jobs will have options on things that they could do. They could decide to go to community college and get additional training. They could go to national service program that would end in some kind of certification. They could get help starting a small business. There’s also enhanced unemployment insurance as part of that, if somebody needs that. “We could have a lot of job disruption , and for that we need a plan. It seems that everybody understands that except possibly the president and the people around him.”