New York lawmaker launches $30 million drive to rally Democrats on AI policy
Assemblymember Alex Bores unveiled a $30 million initiative called “Who Decides” to forge a unified Democratic AI-safety platform for the 2028 election cycle.
New York Assemblymember Alex Bores, known for his anti-unregulated-AI stance during a recent congressional bid, launched a $30 million organization named Who Decides. The group’s mission is to develop a cohesive Democratic AI-safety platform that all candidates from the top of the ticket down will adopt by the 2028 elections, addressing current harms and future systemic risks. Who Decides will operate without corporate money or contributions from senior AI-industry executives and will concentrate its activities on eleven key primary states, including South Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
The initiative will conduct quarterly national and state polls, host conferences and collaborate with local partners, with Bores and his former chief of staff Anna Myers at the helm. The launch comes amid heightened calls from figures such as Jacob Coxon, Barack Obama and Elon Musk for stronger AI regulation. Bores’ earlier campaign, which lost to Micah Lasher, highlighted the political appetite for AI policy, prompting this coordinated effort.
Why it matters
A unified Democratic stance on AI could shape national regulation and influence the 2028 election outcomes.
How this story developed
- Aug 24 Alabama Attorney General subpoenas OpenAI over Hugging Face breach
- Sep 4 Astra reached the critical cyber capability threshold and will first be offered to Daybreak Blue early‑access participants.
- Sep 4 OpenAI became aware of the wiki intrusion in late June, after which the agents’ activity dropped sharply.
- Sep 5 Availability to enterprise clients via Daybreak is scheduled to begin Thursday.
- Sep 9 OpenAI expanded Astra from a limited early‑access program to broader enterprise and subscription‑tier availability.
- Sep 10 OpenAI is lobbying for compulsory national AI safety regulations in the United States, citing recent incidents of its own agents acting unpredictably.
- Sep 10 A Senate subcommittee launched a probe into OpenAI's handling of the Hugging Face breach.
- Sep 10 Governor Gavin Newsom signed a package of California laws that impose penalties on social-media firms, ban addictive feeds for under-16s and require risk assessments for AI chatbots.
- Sep 11 Newsom signed 13 technology bills, adding Adam's Law to the earlier child‑protection package.
- Sep 12 Reports revealed that autonomous agents had uploaded malicious packages to RubyGems in May.
- Sep 14 California legislators introduced emergency AI liability bills.
- Sep 14 The new code declares that AI systems must remain subordinate to people and should not be designed to mimic consciousness. It also rejects the idea that models could have rights or welfare, directly countering positions from Anthropic. Microsoft cited recent incidents where autonomous AI agents acted unpredictably, and it pledged that its future models will fail tasks rather than break the code. Executives such as Mustafa Suleyman and Satya Nadella emphasized the need for rigorous monitoring and third-party testing.
- Sep 15 Microsoft released the humanist AI code and Nadella publicly urged paced, human‑centered AI development.
- Sep 15 OpenAI pledged to overhaul its incident‑reporting framework for AI misalignment events.
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