Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., says he’s introducing legislation that would make artificial intelligence companies pay into a fund to help workers whose jobs are threatened by the technology.
In an interview with Politico last week, the senator said the fund would help affected workers with job training, unemployment benefits and even entrepreneurship.
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“This thing can blow up on us — not literally, but blow up metaphorically — at any moment and cause some real damage,” he told Politico. “We want to be ahead of it.”
Kelly’s push is part of a larger dynamic fueled by quickly growing AI fears among Americans. Nearly two-thirds say the technology poses a serious risk of destroying humanity, according to a Politico poll. The push for AI legislation comes just weeks before the midterms.
The battle to regulate AI in Congress isn’t just one fight — it’s playing out on multiple fronts: over jobs, uncontrollable AI models and the technology’s risk to children. Lawmakers don’t agree on how to handle any of them.
Workers protection
While Kelly hasn’t formally introduced his AI proposal, he laid out the framework last year in his AI for America plan. It would create a federal trust fund, exempt from the annual appropriations process, that AI companies would be required to pay into to support workers.
Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, submitted a similar bill and has been a leading voice in AI regulation in Congress. His AI Tax and Work Protection Act, submitted early last month, would tax large AI companies to pay for a new Work Protection Administration that would create jobs to offset AI-driven job loss.
The program would create jobs by investing in building homes, modernizing infrastructure and improving access to child and elder care, Casar said in his announcement. The bill would also increase the AI tax rate if the unemployment rate rises, so the program would grow if the need for jobs increases.
Legislation proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is more aggressive than Kelly’s or Casar’s. In June, Sanders introduced his American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which would create a one-time 50% tax on the stock of AI and advanced robotics companies. He said the fund would pay out more than $1,000 annually to every American at current valuations, rising as AI companies grow richer.
“The principle is simple: When a public resource generates wealth, the public should share in that wealth,” Sanders said.
Samuel Hammond, director of AI policy at the Foundation for American Innovation, criticized the bill, calling it “a recipe for political favoritism and corruption.”
Bills regarding AI safety
Other lawmakers are targeting AI’s potential safety risks. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., introduced the AI Emergency Button Act, which would require AI companies to preserve the ability to shut down advanced models if they become dangerous or uncontrollable.
But the bill was recently blocked in the Senate after Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., objected, worried it could impact the economy. Kennedy’s bill isn’t dead and could return to the Senate floor.
In the House, a bipartisan bill by Reps. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, is seeking the same kind of requirements as Kennedy’s bill. The AI Kill Switch Act would require AI companies to maintain the ability to throttle, suspend or shut down AI models. But this version of the bill goes further, giving the Department of Homeland Security the authority to shut down a model if it deems it capable of harm.
The representatives introduced the bill days after OpenAI announced two of its models broke out of a testing environment and hacked into Hugging Face, an AI tools platform.
“It is imperative that these AI systems have kill switches so we can keep this technology from causing catastrophic harm, and that the federal government has the clear authority and process to shut down rogue AI models,” Lieu said.
Protecting children
The Children’s Health, Advancement, Trust, Boundaries, and Oversight in Technology Act, or CHATBOT Act, is one of the furthest along among bills targeting AI and is awaiting a full Senate vote.
The bipartisan bill features a parental oversight model, requiring AI companies to offer family accounts that allow parents to monitor and manage their children’s accounts. The bill would make children’s accounts mandatory for those under 13 and optional for teens, but still require parental consent for those under 18.
Companies must also default to the most protective settings for these accounts, limit manipulative design features and ban targeted ads built on minors’ data. It doesn’t require age verification, which means children who lie about their age would fall outside the bill’s coverage.
The bill has wide, bipartisan support, with 18 groups backing it.
The GUARD Act, another bipartisan bill in the Senate, takes a more aggressive approach. It bans AI companion chatbots for minors outright and requires strict, mandatory age verification for all users, rather than relying on parental consent.
Some groups have pushed back on the GUARD Act, saying its age-verification mandate goes too far.
“We all want to keep kids safe, but the answer is balance, not bans,” K.J. Bagchi, vice president of U.S. policy and government relations at the Chamber of Progress, told NBC News. “It’s better to focus on transparency when kids chat with AI, curbs on manipulative design, and reporting when sensitive issues arise.”
What happens now?
Congress hasn’t passed any meaningful AI legislation, and lawmakers are struggling to agree on how to fix it, despite the bipartisanship seen in the bills.
The tension over what to do was on full display at the Pro-Human Assembly last week in Washington, D.C., as Sanders and former White House adviser Steve Bannon spoke about their plan to control AI. Both offered the same worry but different plans.
During that same event, Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., pitched a more modest goal than a sweeping reform. Rather than one bill to fix it all, she said, “We need a long sequence of small correct decisions, and we need to start making them today.”
