The candidate at the center of the brewing midterm AI war unveils his agenda

Alex Bores, a New York state lawmaker at the center of the political fight over the future of artificial intelligence, released an eight-point plan for a national AI framework Wednesday, wading further into the issue that is defining his campaign for Congress.

Bores, one of about a dozen contenders seeking the Democratic nomination in New York’s deep-blue, open 12th Congressional District, revealed the plan as he faces opposition from some of the biggest national players in AI, as well as support from some others.

The dynamic has elevated him in his House contest, in which he has already faced seven figures’ worth of attack ads from a super PAC funded by AI industry leaders — and raised hundreds of thousands from workers at other AI companies.

In an interview, Bores said that given how quickly AI is advancing, there’s a chance most of the plan will need to be reworked. That’s the reality of how different the state of the technology might be by then and a big reason he wanted to put his ideas on paper now.

“But unless we put a stake in the ground and start engaging seriously on what the policies are needed,” he said, “we’re never going to have the chance to catch up.”

Bores’ plan includes eight subsections of policy proposals, each with a series of bullet-pointed items. In a section about data centers, Bores calls for cutting red tape for structures that use renewable energy and cover the cost of electricity grid upgrades, an incentive aiming to tackle growing consumer frustration about the impact of the massive, power-hungry buildings on local communities.

In a section about labor, Bores calls for requiring companies to report AI-related job losses and creating an AI dividend, funded by productivity gains, that would be paid to Americans.

Bores is also calling for initiating a national version of the RAISE Act, his state-level AI safety legislation in New York. The legislation would mandate independent safety testing of AI models and “create accountability mechanisms for AI systems that cause demonstrable harm.” He says the government must require large AI developers to inform regulators with confidential disclosures about their models’ capabilities while building contingency plans for the effects of rapid AI advancements.

The Defense Department “does war-game preparation for lots of different things that could come so that we understand how we would react and hopefully are not surprised,” Bores said. “We do disaster planning on natural disasters. We have not given enough thought to the many different futures that AI might bring. None of this is preordained or predetermined.”

Bores’ outline also includes new child safety standards for AI, including allowing parents to have access to their kids’ AI interactions and requiring age verification to use AI tools. It also calls for passing a national data privacy law and creating standards that would allow viewers to trace the origins and editing histories of AI-generated images, video and audio.

“I think people don’t realize how good the state-of-the-art AI currently is, but more to the point, how quickly it is improving and how the rate at which it improves is itself increasing,” Bores said, adding: “We need to be prepared for if it slows down, but we should be prepared for if continues at this rate or even increases. And I don’t think people are engaging that question seriously enough.”

Bores’ bid for Congress is in the center of an expensive clash of vision over the future of AI.

The pro-AI super PAC Leading the Future, which is funded in part by OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, is part of a network that has stockpiled a nine-figure war chest as it aims to support AI-friendly candidates on both sides of the aisle. The group has already spent more than $1 million on advertising attacking Bores. It’s also involved in upcoming congressional primaries in Texas, North Carolina and Illinois.

A recent ad focuses on Bores’ past work for Palantir Technologies, “selling the tech for ICE, enabling ICE and empowering their deportations while making bank,” it says.

While it accuses Bores of “hypocrisy” in the ad, Leading the Future has relied on support from Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. Bores’ allies argue the attacks on his past work are outweighed by his vocal push to put guardrails on big tech companies.

Meanwhile, Bores has drawn financial support from the other side of the AI debate, including leaders at Anthropic, an AI company that has supported more regulation of the industry.

Leading the Future has said it supports or opposes candidates on the basis of whether they support a “national framework” for regulating AI, pre-empting a “patchwork” approach spawning from state-by-state AI regulations.

But Bores, who has backed state-level regulation in his current job and now proposes a national framework, said the group is being dishonest about why it opposes his candidacy.

“They don’t want a national standard,” he said. “They actively advocate against any standard whatsoever, and they only talk about a federal standard insofar as it helps them justify pre-empting the states. ... I don’t like using such harsh language, but they are clearly liars.”

In a statement, Leading the Future strategist Josh Vlasto said, “Assemblyman Bores has advanced exactly the type of ideological and politically motivated legislation that would handcuff not only New York’s, but the entire country’s, ability to lead on AI jobs and innovation.

“The original RAISE Act as Assemblyman Bores proposed it, which was ultimately rejected, is a clear example of the patchwork, uninformed, and bureaucratic state laws that would slow American progress and open the door for China to win the global race for AI leadership,” Vlasto continued, adding, “His ideological agenda threatens American competitiveness.”

The AI battle is just one angle drawing national interest and money into the congressional contest in New York. Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, 78, the longest-serving House member from the state, announced last year that he would retire in 2026, pointing to the need for generational change in his party.

Five candidates raised more than $1 million for their campaigns last year, including Bores and Jack Schlossberg, the Kennedy family scion who has leveraged his at-times-edgy social media platform into a House bid. Despite being a first-time candidate, Schlossberg has won prominent backers, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., helping make the case that he’s mounting a serious campaign.

Nadler has weighed in, too, backing another top fundraiser in Micah Lasher, a colleague of Bores’ in the state Assembly. Former Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who fell to Nadler in 2018 during the last major primary in the district, has also weighed in, backing Bores.

And the sprawling field of more than a dozen candidates also includes George Conway, the former Republican-turned-prominent Trump critic who, like Schlossberg, has put opposing the president at the center of his campaign.

Bores, however, sees the fight between him and segments of the AI industry as defining the race.

“There’s only two campaigns that have raised millions of dollars — plural,” Bores said. “And those two campaigns are mine and the AI super PAC targeting me.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com