The Fight for Serious AI Regulation Just Won a Big Victory in Massachusetts

Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey won a major primary election victory on Tuesday, claiming another win for the left in this summer’s struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party. “Tonight is a testament to the power of the progressive movement,” Markey declared to a cheering crowd in which his young supporters celebrated a 65–35 triumph over his primary rival, US Representative Seth Moulton.

It was also, the senator explained, a victory in the fight against what he described as “the criminal enterprises of Big Oil and Big Tech.” A longtime foe of corporate greed and monopoly, Markey made stymieing the plans of AI oligarchs a crucial part of his campaign. With progressive-populist enthusiasm, he promised to “tax the rich, block the bombs, and stop data centers from polluting our communities.”

This is not a new fight for Markey. As the senator noted earlier this year, he’s been “working for more than a decade to propose commonsense policies to take back unchecked power from Big Tech and put it into the hands of the American people.”

But what made Markey’s victory notable was that, in the last days of the primary campaign, he faced and overcame a cynical attack from Moulton, who attempted to dumb down the AI debate in a way that he thought would turn voters against the incumbent.

Moulton’s primary challenge to Markey was always tough to fathom. A middle-aged congressman with limitless ambition but finite political skills—as evidenced by his failed bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination—Moulton tried to make the fight a generational struggle between a 47-year-old rival and an 80-year-old incumbent. The message never got traction because Markey campaigned relentlessly as an energetic progressive legislator with a record of standing on the right side of history.

Yet Moulton’s desperation to make the race a referendum on youth-versus-age made the last days before Tuesday’s primary contest an instructive measure of the emerging discourse over AI regulation.

When the two candidates clashed in a pre-primary debate last month, Markey gave an uninspired answer to a silly question about whether he uses AI tools on his electronic devices. He basically said he used the apps that were on his iPhone and iPad and left it at that.

Moulton, who talked during the campaign about “winning the AI race while making sure our kids, our economy, and our communities are protected,” seized on what he thought was an opening to catch up with an incumbent who was opening a wide lead in the polls. “Not understanding the basics of AI—the most important technology of our lifetime—should be disqualifying for a U.S. Senator,” he announced on social media. “This is why we need a new generation of leadership. The future is now.”

Then he pinned the message to the top of his X feed. Then he made a campaign ad. Then the challenger said, “Americans are genuinely concerned about AI. Octogenarians in the Senate are not helping.”

The campaigns also traded charges about Moulton’s investment in defense contractors, including “an AI firm that partners with the U.S. Army,” and how Markey had received the support of a nonprofit backed by Anthropic, a firm that has supported AI regulation

Amid all this bluster, Markey kept his cool, while Moulton revealed his naïveté regarding the debate over AI.

That debate is about a lot more than ruminations on the relative merits of ChatGPT and Claude. It is a fight over who will set the rules for our future.

The mounting pressure to meet the demands of the AI billionaires—to whom Donald Trump pays so much deference—raises fundamental questions about corporate power, privacy, the future of work, and a host of other issues. These are issues that Markey—long a leading Senate advocate for worker rights and consumer protection—has been focused on for years. And they are issues on which he has displayed far more insight and agility than most members of Congress.

Markey’s detailed “AI Accountability Agenda: Taking Power Back From Big Tech” program pulls together groundbreaking legislative proposals to regulate data centers and to address the broader impacts of AI—including the No Robot Bosses Act, which “would prohibit an employer from primarily relying on automated systems for work-related decisions such as hiring, firing, or promotion. The legislation would also require employers to disclose to their employees their use of an automated decision system; conduct detailed evaluations of an automated system’s impact on workers before using the system; and provide an employee with the option to appeal to a human any decision involving an automated system.”

The senator has also proposed and supported legislation to create a human override option for AI decisions that might limit access to healthcare, infringe on privacy rights, or endanger children, and to prevent AI-powered algorithms from amplifying the biases and discrimination that is already embedded in society.

Markey’s even got a plan to prevent the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of AI oligarchs. His Equal Tax Act “would tax investment income at the same rate as ordinary labor income for individuals making more than $1 million. The bill would limit preferential tax rates for long-term capital gains and dividends, end the stepped-up basis loophole, restrict the use of like-kind exchanges by the ultra-wealthy, and limit the passthrough deduction for high-income individuals. By closing loopholes that reward wealth over work, the Equal Tax Act would ensure that the people who profit most from the AI boom pay their fair share.”

Voters recognize that the fight over AI cannot be reduced to election-eve jibes over which candidate might more ably manipulate apps on a phone. It is an existential struggle over questions of whether those with wealth and power will roll over workers, consumers, and civil rights. “Americans,” Markey has explained, “deserve policymakers who are paying attention to their lives, not Big Tech’s bottom line.” By an overwhelming margin, Massachusetts voters gave Ed Markey a mandate to continue serving as that sort of policymaker.