OpenAI is already trying to shape the 2028 election

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OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane thinks the 2028 presidential election could be a defining moment for AI. And he wants politicians to start developing policies that address Americans’ concerns about the technology, rather than simply paying lip service to anti-AI sentiment and the backlash against data centers.

OpenAI 全球事务首席官克里斯·勒汉（Chris Lehane）认为，2028 年总统大选可能是人工智能的一个决定性时刻。他希望政客们开始制定能够解决美国民众对该技术担忧的政策，而不是仅仅对反人工智能情绪和针对数据中心的抵制进行口头上的敷衍。

In a new essay, Lehane compares AI’s potential to reshape the economy to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the 1930s set of federal programs and reforms enacted after industrialization and the Great Depression shattered the old economic order. He observes that Americans today feel similarly anxious about losing control over their economic futures and urges politicians to find a “compelling third path” that allows people to share in AI’s benefits.

在一篇新文章中，勒汉将人工智能重塑经济的潜力比作富兰克林·D·罗斯福总统的“新政”——即 20 世纪 30 年代在工业化和大萧条摧毁旧经济秩序后所实施的一系列联邦计划和改革。他观察到，今天的美国人对于失去对自己经济未来的掌控感到同样的焦虑，并敦促政客们寻找一条“令人信服的第三条道路”，让人们能够分享人工智能带来的红利。

He lays out five policy priorities, spanning worker protections and education to AI safety and data center development. The essay comes on the heels of a stunning Democratic victory in the midterm elections, in which Democrats flipped control of Congress amid widespread voter frustration over the cost of living.

他提出了五项政策重点，涵盖了工人保护、教育、人工智能安全以及数据中心发展。这篇文章发表在民主党在中期选举中取得惊人胜利之后，当时选民对生活成本普遍感到不满，民主党借此夺回了国会的控制权。

Kate Brennan, who leads AI and corporate power policy at the AI Now Institute, told TechCrunch that Lehane’s rhetoric marks a notable shift from OpenAI’s policy agenda last year, which focused on accelerating AI development, reducing regulatory barriers, and expanding infrastructure. Unsurprisingly, many of Lehane’s proposals would encourage wider AI adoption and support the infrastructure expansion companies like OpenAI need to grow.

AI Now Institute 负责人工智能与企业权力政策的凯特·布伦南（Kate Brennan）告诉 TechCrunch，勒汉的言论标志着 OpenAI 去年的政策议程发生了显著转变，去年的重点在于加速人工智能开发、减少监管壁垒以及扩大基础设施。不出所料，勒汉的许多提议旨在鼓励更广泛的人工智能应用，并支持像 OpenAI 这样需要增长的公司进行基础设施扩张。

The original New Deal established protections for workers and placed constraints on corporate power. It’s less clear how Lehane’s vision would hold AI companies accountable for the economic disruption their technology could create. “Invoking a New Deal metaphor is to invoke state capacity to actually benefit the public,” Brennan said. “This is written by a private company that is trying to advocate for policies for its own benefit. It is ahistorical at best and harmful at worst.”

最初的“新政”确立了对工人的保护，并对企业权力进行了约束。目前尚不清楚勒汉的愿景将如何让人工智能公司为其技术可能造成的经济破坏承担责任。“援引‘新政’这一隐喻，是为了调用国家能力来真正造福公众，”布伦南说，“这是由一家试图为其自身利益倡导政策的私营公司所写的。往好了说是脱离历史，往坏了说是有害的。”

While AI wasn’t a dominant issue in the midterms, opposition to data centers emerged as a major bipartisan concern in several races in the midterms. And Lehane may be right that AI will become a bigger part of the conversation over the next two years. Affordability is already shaping up as a key issue for the 2028 election as Americans grapple with inflation, tariffs, and the rising cost of living.

虽然人工智能并非中期选举中的主导议题，但对数据中心的反对已成为中期选举中多个选区的两党共同关注点。勒汉可能是对的，人工智能将在未来两年内成为讨论中更重要的一部分。随着美国人应对通货膨胀、关税和不断上涨的生活成本，负担能力已成为 2028 年大选的一个关键议题。

AI could become an increasingly large part of that conversation as voters stress about data centers hiking up electricity bills, AI replacing their jobs, and technology’s economic gains flowing only to a handful of wealthy companies. Lehane acknowledges many of these concerns, but he offers few concrete proposals to prevent AI’s gains from becoming concentrated. Instead, he largely pitches AI as a path to greater prosperity for Americans willing to embrace it.

随着选民们担心数据中心推高电费、人工智能取代他们的工作，以及技术的经济收益仅流向少数几家富裕公司，人工智能可能会在这一讨论中占据越来越大的比重。勒汉承认了其中的许多担忧，但他几乎没有提供具体的建议来防止人工智能的收益过度集中。相反，他主要将人工智能宣传为愿意拥抱它的美国人通往更大繁荣的途径。

Take his proposals for the tax code. He suggests incentives for workers to learn AI skills, easier capital access for entrepreneurs, and new approaches to employee ownership and profit-sharing. Those are not the same as binding requirements that would ensure workers share in AI-generated wealth or that companies pay the costs of displacing workers.

以他关于税法的提议为例。他建议为工人学习人工智能技能提供激励措施，为企业家提供更便捷的资本获取渠道，并提出员工持股和利润分享的新方法。这些并不等同于确保工人分享人工智能创造的财富，或要求公司支付取代工人所产生费用的强制性要求。

“I was struck by how much of this policy is for a future…that is already predicated on mass AI adoption and AI benefiting society, which we have yet to see,” Brennan said. “All of it is predicated on benefiting from AI’s upside.” Brennan said it would make more sense to see things like a revised corporate tax rate or tax incentives for hiring human beings rather than automating jobs, as well as ways to keep companies from amassing outsize market power.

“令我震惊的是，这些政策中有多少是针对一个……已经预设了大规模人工智能应用且人工智能造福社会的未来，而我们尚未看到这一点，”布伦南说，“所有这些都建立在从人工智能的积极面获益的基础上。”布伦南表示，如果能看到诸如修订企业税率、为雇佣人类而非自动化工作提供税收激励，以及防止公司积累过大市场权力的措施，会更有意义。

Lehane’s emphasis on expanding AI’s economic opportunities, rather than limiting potential harms, extends to data centers. He notes concerns about data centers while emphasizing the construction jobs and local tax revenue they could generate. He then warns that politicians who support a data center moratorium could jeopardize America’s lead over China, going so far as to compare that stance to the 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq war.

勒汉强调扩大人工智能的经济机会，而非限制潜在危害，这一点也延伸到了数据中心问题上。他在指出对数据中心的担忧的同时，强调了它们可能带来的建筑工作岗位和地方税收。随后他警告称，支持暂停建设数据中心的政客可能会危及美国对中国的领先地位，甚至将这种立场比作 2002 年授权伊拉克战争的投票。

Lehane also makes child safety and education central to his proposed agenda, stressing the importance of age-appropriate protections and safeguards around AI companions for minors. He also warns against keeping AI out of classrooms, arguing that doing so could lead to inequality between wealthy students and “children in rural communities.” But the argument takes for granted that AI improves learning, a claim that remains unproven and one critics say deserves more examination than more funding or individualized attention from human teachers.

勒汉还将儿童安全和教育作为其拟议议程的核心，强调了针对未成年人的人工智能伴侣进行适龄保护和安全保障的重要性。他还警告不要将人工智能拒之于教室之外，认为这样做可能导致富裕学生与“农村社区儿童”之间的不平等。但这一论点理所当然地认为人工智能可以改善学习，这一主张尚未得到证实，批评者认为这比单纯的资金投入或人类教师的个性化关注更值得深入研究。

Lehane also calls for enforceable AI safety standards, independent evaluations, public oversight, and the ability to restrict AI systems or use a kill switch to shut them down — though recent studies show that OpenAI and other AI labs haven’t published comprehensive plans for what they would do if a model escaped human control. Brennan called these stances “disingenuous,” pointing to OpenAI’s history of opposing legislation designed to impose such measures.

勒汉还呼吁建立可执行的人工智能安全标准、独立评估、公众监督，以及限制人工智能系统或使用“终止开关”将其关闭的能力——尽管最近的研究表明，OpenAI 和其他人工智能实验室尚未发布关于如果模型脱离人类控制该如何应对的全面计划。布伦南称这些立场“虚伪”，并指出 OpenAI 过去曾反对旨在实施此类措施的立法。

In 2024, for example, OpenAI opposed California’s AI safety bill, SB 1047, which would have mandated catastrophic risk evaluations and shutdown capabilities. Last year, OpenAI also sought to limit state regulation, arguing that states could undermine American innovation. The company has more recently shifted some of those positions, backing several state safety laws and saying it would be open to independent evaluators embedded in the company.

例如，2024 年，OpenAI 反对加利福尼亚州的人工智能安全法案 SB 1047，该法案本将强制要求进行灾难性风险评估和具备关闭能力。去年，OpenAI 还试图限制州级监管，辩称各州可能会破坏美国的创新。该公司最近改变了其中一些立场，支持了几项州级安全法律，并表示愿意接受入驻公司的独立评估人员。

Lehane also argues that people should maintain control over consequential decisions made using AI, rather than handing off judgment entirely to machines. But that raises the question of what human control really looks like in a society where humans are increasingly being required to use AI in education, work, healthcare, and government. Throughout his essay, Lehane frames AI as a technology that c

勒汉还主张，人们应该对使用人工智能做出的重大决策保持控制权，而不是将判断权完全交给机器。但这引发了一个问题：在一个人类日益被要求在教育、工作、医疗和政府部门使用人工智能的社会中，人类的控制权究竟是什么样子的？在整篇文章中，勒汉将人工智能描绘成一种……的技术。