OpenAI’s Push to Shape the 2028 Election
OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, believes the 2028 presidential election could be a defining moment for AI. He is urging politicians to develop substantive policies that address Americans’ concerns about the technology rather than merely paying lip service to anti-AI sentiment and the growing 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. Lehane lays out five policy priorities spanning worker protections, education, AI safety, and data center development.
The essay comes on the heels of a stunning Democratic victory in the midterm elections, in which Democrats flipped control of Congress amid widespread voter frustration over the cost of living. Kate Brennan, who leads AI and corporate power policy at the AI Now Institute, told TechCrunch that Lehane’s rhetoric marks a notable shift from OpenAI’s policy agenda last year, which focused on accelerating AI development, reducing regulatory barriers, and expanding infrastructure.
Unsurprisingly, many of Lehane’s proposals would encourage wider AI adoption and support the infrastructure expansion companies like OpenAI need to grow. The original New Deal established protections for workers and placed constraints on corporate power. It is less clear how Lehane’s vision would hold AI companies accountable for the economic disruption their technology could create.
“Invoking a New Deal metaphor is to invoke state capacity to actually benefit the public,” Brennan said. “This is written by a private company that is trying to advocate for policies for its own benefit. It is ahistorical at best and harmful at worst.”
While AI was not a dominant issue in the midterms, opposition to data centers emerged as a major bipartisan concern in several races. Lehane may be right that AI will become a bigger part of the conversation over the next two years.
Affordability is already shaping up as a key issue for the 2028 election as Americans grapple with inflation, tariffs, and the rising cost of living. AI could become an increasingly large part of that conversation as voters worry about data centers driving up electricity bills, AI replacing their jobs, and technology’s economic gains flowing only to a handful of wealthy companies.
Lehane acknowledges many of these concerns, but he offers few concrete proposals to prevent AI’s gains from becoming concentrated. Instead, he largely pitches AI as a path to greater prosperity for Americans willing to embrace it.
Take his proposals for the tax code. He suggests incentives for workers to learn AI skills, easier capital access for entrepreneurs, and new approaches to employee ownership and profit-sharing. Those are not the same as binding requirements that would ensure workers share in AI-generated wealth or that companies pay the costs of displacing workers.
“I was struck by how much of this policy is for a future…that is already predicated on mass AI adoption and AI benefiting society, which we have yet to see,” Brennan said. “All of it is predicated on benefiting from AI’s upside.”
via TechCrunch