OpenAI is already trying to shape the 2028 election — SkimNews
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- Chris Lehane published an essay arguing that the 2028 presidential election could be defining for AI, compared its economic potential to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and laid out five policy priorities spanning worker protections, education, AI safety and data-center development.
- OpenAI last year prioritized accelerating AI development, reducing regulatory barriers and expanding infrastructure; Lehane’s new essay reframes the agenda around five broader priorities, a shift AI Now Institute’s Kate Brennan called notable.
- Kate Brennan said Lehane’s tax ideas—AI-skills incentives, easier capital access, employee ownership and profit-sharing—lack binding requirements to share AI wealth or cover displacement costs; she instead favored corporate-tax changes, hiring incentives and curbs on market power.
- SB 1047: In 2024, OpenAI opposed the California AI-safety bill that would have mandated catastrophic-risk evaluations and shutdown capabilities; last year it sought to limit state regulation, before more recently backing several state safety laws and saying it was open to company-embedded independent evaluators.
- Chris Lehane argued that a data-center moratorium would jeopardize America’s lead over China and compared that stance to the 2002 vote authorizing the Iraq War, while emphasizing construction jobs and local tax revenue.
- Chris Lehane made age-appropriate safeguards for AI companions central, opposed keeping AI out of classrooms because it would deepen inequality between wealthy students and rural children, and advanced a learning-benefit claim critics called unproven.
- Chris Lehane called for enforceable AI-safety standards, independent evaluations, public oversight and a kill switch, even as recent studies found OpenAI and other labs had not published comprehensive plans for a model escaping human control.
Why it matters: For the 2028 campaign, OpenAI is trying to make federal policy a vehicle for mass AI adoption while shifting from its 2024 opposition to SB 1047 toward support for several state safety laws. Its five priorities offer limited worker protections and an unproven classroom rationale, favoring AI firms and data-center expansion over binding redistribution for displaced workers.
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