Vichal Kumar, public defender and Democratic candidate for New York’s 7th Congressional District, released a comprehensive federal plan for artificial intelligence on Wednesday. This plan is built on the principle that the public should be in charge of how AI is used, rather than a handful of tech companies.
It provides a detailed outline on how the federal government can resist AI’s harms, reclaim public control, and take steps on how to reimagine areas where AI is exerting most control — center development, worker automation and displacement, privacy and surveillance, and safeguards for children.
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“AI is being built by a handful of billion- and trillion-dollar tech companies, with developers putting data centers in communities that never asked for them, and families being handed the bill,” said Kumar. “Higher electric bills. Jobs automated away with nothing to replace them. Surveillance pointed at immigrants and protesters. Our kids’ safety and wellbeing is being threatened. I have spent my career holding unaccountable systems to account, and that is the fight I am bringing to the tech companies and developers, for a fair and just use of AI. We can have an AI economy that works for all of us. But only if we build it on our terms, not theirs.”
The plan is centered around a Federal Artificial Intelligence Commission (FAIC) with real enforcement authority, not just an advisory role. According to the plan, this commission will license and audit AI in hiring, housing, lending, and healthcare, require transparency from developers on the data, energy, and water their systems use, set national standards for data center siting, and refer violations to the Department of Justice.
“When radio reshaped American life, we created the FCC. When the stock market crashed in 1929, we created the SEC,” said Kumar. “Every time a new technology has transformed this country, the government has answered with real oversight. AI demands the same leadership. The FAIC has to be built with the people AI affects, which is all of us, not written by the companies that profit from it.”
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The plan pushes back against utility bills that make working families pay for AI buildout, grid and water strain, as well as automation cutting wages and discarding workers, government purchase of private data, algorithmic housing discrimination, and AI-generated child sexual abuse material. It also mentions reclaiming local control on what gets built in communities, the right to good jobs, classrooms led by teachers rather than chatbots, and control over individual data.
Additionally, the plan proposes a three-year data center moratorium, local grid and water upgrades, an AI dividend paid directly to host communities, and binding Community Benefit Agreements (CBAs) on noise, water, and design.