Like Social Media, AI Requires Difficult Choices

The piece argues that AI, like social media before it, demands urgent, coordinated policy choices to steer its societal and democratic impacts, outlining four fronts: enforcing laws against AI-enabled abuses (executive/judiciary), passing comprehensive federal privacy and data portability legislation (Congress), using state-level regulation and taxation to mitigate AI externalities, and encouraging users to adopt public or open-source AI alternatives. It contends that decisions made now by policymakers, companies, and citizens will shape whether AI becomes pro-democratic or harmful.