Senator Laphonza Butler thinks supporting Big AI or human workers is a ‘false choice’

Representing California in Congress comes with a unique challenge: navigating national politics while reflecting the interests of the most populous state in the US, including a large constituency from the tech industry. It’s a challenge both current California Sen. Laphonza Butler and Vice President Kamala Harris — who previously held that title — have taken on. And right now, governing the tech world means addressing AI.

Congress hasn’t made much headway on a national framework for regulating generative AI. But California is the epicenter of the AI industry, home to companies like OpenAI and Google. On the national stage, Harris has acted as an AI czar within the Biden administration, leading discussions with industry players and civil society leaders about how to regulate it. Butler, who has a long history with the VP, is focusing on a specific problem: how AI systems impact labor and social equity.

Butler spoke with The Verge about balancing the interests of AI companies and the people their products impact, including workers who fear being automated out of a job. “It all starts with listening,” says Butler, a former labor leader. “It starts with listening to both the developers, the communities potentially impacted negatively, and the spaces where opportunity exists.”

Like many officials, Butler says she wants to help protect Americans from the potential dangers of AI without stifling opportunities that could come from it. She praised both Schumer and the Biden administration for “creating spaces for communities to have [a] voice.” Both have brought in labor and civil society leaders in addition to major AI industry executives to educate and engage on regulation in the space.

Butler insists lawmakers don’t need to make “false choices” between the interests of AI company executives and the people who make up the workforce. “Listening is fundamental, balancing everyone’s interest, but the goal has to be to do the most good for the most people. And to me, that is where a policymaker will always tend to land.”

California state Senator Scott Wiener made similar statements about his hotly contested state-level bill, SB 1047. The bill, which would have required whistleblower protections and safeguards for potentially disastrous events at large AI companies, made it all the way to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk before being vetoed, with companies like OpenAI warning it would slow innovation. In August, Wiener argued that “we can advance both innovation and safety; the two are not mutually exclusive.” So far, however, lawmakers are struggling to find a balance between the two.

Butler praises the steps both Schumer and the Biden-Harris administration have taken so far to create appropriate guardrails around AI but says “there’s always more to do.” Schumer laid out a roadmap earlier this year about how to shape AI policy (though it didn’t specifically introduce actual legislation), and the White House has secured voluntary commitments from AI companies to develop the technology safely.

One of Butler’s recent contributions is the Workforce of the Future Act, which she introduced with Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI). The bill would direct the Department of Labor, National Science Foundation, and Department of Education to study the impact of AI across job sectors, and it would create a $250 million grant program to prepare workers for the skills they’ll need in the future, especially in industries likely to see job displacement.

“Hopefully, by both readying the work workforce of today but also preparing the workforce of tomorrow, we’ll be able to catch the full opportunity that is the deployment of artificial intelligence,” Butler says.

Butler sees this as a moment in US history where policymakers could “get ahead of what we know is going to be eventual disruption and try to create a pipeline of opportunities that can again help to both stabilize our economies by creating equitable opportunity.”

But Butler is realistic about the dynamics of Congress and the upcoming election in just over a month. “You and I both know that this 118th Congress is rapidly coming to a close, with a lot of business in front of it right now,” she says. And Butler believes legislators still need to have important conversations with people representing different sides of the issue before advancing comprehensive AI legislation. And there’s also, she notes, the small issue of “getting through the next presidential election this November.”