A Plan for Artificial Intelligence
Core Principles
The next Congress must write the foundational, ethical, and regulatory rules for artificial intelligence (AI). Our leaders must act quickly to ensure that two things become true: America is the leading player in AI, and AI serves the people – the people don’t serve AI and the few that own it.
Decisions made over the next two years will shape every major industry for decades, from safety standards and competition to workforce transition and government use. These choices must be made thoughtfully and by leaders who understand where AI is going.
As someone who understands technology and has been affected by corporate greed, Eric Jones will be a leading voice in the room when those decisions occur. He will bring in the minds of those actually building and working with AI – as well as ethicists, environmentalists, energy experts, economists, labor unions, and activists representing those affected by the proliferation of the technology. Eric knows this conversation must be shaped by those that understand and are affected by the technology.
America’s AI strategy needs to make the US the global leader on how we develop and manage the emerging technology. America should be pro-innovation; however, real innovation requires strong boundaries & rules, public trust, and a level playing field. Eric’s view is simple: the greatest long-term threat to American AI leadership is not regulation, it’s the absence of it. The real risk isn’t oversight. It’s the consequences we as a society will face if we fail to regulate and provide robust oversight on American companies, executives, and politicians.
Ethical, American Approach
Eric believes America must win the AI race globally and fears a world in which another global superpower dominates AI development and proliferation. He wants the foundational models, the advanced chips, the data centers, and the top talent to be here – and made here – in the United States, not in Beijing or overseas. That means major federal investment in AI research, significant domestic development of renewable energy, expanding the CHIPS Act to include AI infrastructure, and STEM pipeline development at every level.
He also believes the industry needs robust, practical, and humane federal rules and standards. Our regulatory framework needs to be proactive and actively considerate of humanity, the job market, the environment, wealth disparity, and the accumulation of power by a small few. The current vacuum of federal inaction is creating exactly the kind of uncertainty that makes long-term investment harder, not easier. The United States must develop a robust federal regulatory system with strict industry standards – which states like California can expand upon and take further if their residents so choose.
America’s AI Approach must be fundamental, ethical, and include the following: strong federal framework that establishes national standards for competition, data privacy, and environmental impact; this federal framework must preempt conflicting state laws that undermine it while allowing states to go further.
Mandatory safety plans and independent audits for frontier models, scoped to high-capability systems – not a blanket compliance burden on every business structured to favor only the largest players.
Support for open-source AI development as a counterweight to closed ecosystems, without regulations that entrench incumbents – ensuring development can be competitive and pursued by the many, not by the few.
Mandatory on-site renewable power generation for all data centers, keeping data centers out of the power grid — because while we must lead the global AI race, we must also ensure that we do so in a way that protects our wallets, our planet, and our future. Such a mandate will also drive investment in onshoring sustainable energy and driving down costs.
Mandatory water usage standards – today, the cleanest data centers use an approximate of just two households’ worth of water per year, while the worst consume a whole city’s worth annually. We must ensure our data centers minimize water and resource consumption.
Robust antitrust enforcement in AI markets, including scrutiny of mergers that concentrate control over foundational models and support for interoperability standards. Power and wealth disparities must be mitigated and reversed. This technology ought to enrich and liberate everyday Americans, not just the impending trillionaires.
Worker transition investments, funded in large part from taxes on inference workloads and by companies that benefit most from automation — because public support for AI depends on shared economic gains.
Robust data privacy protection laws and an AI Bill of Rights – because the people need to be protected, and the technology should serve the people.
What We Know
We’ve already seen the cost of fragmented regulation. In the US, a growing patchwork of state privacy laws has created inconsistent standards that increase costs and complexity for businesses while delivering uneven protections for consumers. Internationally, European digital frameworks like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Digital Services Act (DSA) add more layers of divergence.
The same dynamic is emerging even faster in AI. California, Texas, Colorado, Illinois, and others are moving ahead with their own, diverging rules. Here in California, the pursuit of robust regulation is critical and can set the standard nationally. However, without federal action, companies will spend the next decade navigating a fragmented compliance maze that slows innovation without meaningfully improving safety.
We must also learn from the job displacement that crushed the American working class and left many communities fighting for scraps. Corporate profit maximization was sold to us as globalization. But globalization without proper regulation or national investment drove jobs overseas through the 20th and early 21st centuries without providing replacements or pathways for American workers and the communities they built. Far too many families were left without opportunity, without income, and without a future. We cannot repeat this mistake. This time it would look different – automating jobs instead of shipping them elsewhere. We must protect American jobs, incentivize job creation, and tax AI workloads to reinvest in union-powered job pathways – all while investing in critical industries and national infrastructure that create more jobs here at home.
Bottom Line
Eric’s position is clear: America must lead the world in AI – and we win that race by writing a strong national framework, not by leaving one unwritten. A single, robust federal baseline that states can build on sets real standards for competition, privacy, the environment, and the workers whose lives this technology will reshape. That clarity isn't a constraint on innovation – it's the foundation of it. It's how we earn public trust, give long-term builders a level playing field, and make sure the gains are shared by everyday Americans rather than captured by the few who own the technology.
Eric intends to help write that framework – pro-innovation, and unapologetically pro-people: built with those creating the technology, and accountable to those most exposed to its risks.