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.
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. He lays out five policy priorities, spanning worker protections and education to AI safety and data center development.
