Sen. Bernie Sanders · 2025

Sen. Bernie Sanders — AI Policy Proposals

The most interventionist and structurally critical position in the current debate, treating AI governance as inseparable from questions of corporate power and wealth inequality. Sanders' proposals include a national data center moratorium, a robot tax, and calls to break up major AI companies.

Key Provisions

• National moratorium on new data center construction
• Robot tax on corporations replacing workers with machines, revenue directed to displaced workers
• Break up OpenAI and other major AI companies as antidemocratic concentrations of power
• Increased employee ownership of AI companies
• Reduced workweek to distribute AI productivity gains
• Report warning AI could eliminate nearly 100 million U.S. jobs in a decade

Regulatory Philosophy

Structural intervention and democratic control. Sanders views AI not as a technology policy problem but as a power and inequality problem. His proposals -- moratoriums, breakups, robot taxes -- are tools of political economy, not technical governance. He is the only major voice calling for a pause in AI infrastructure buildout.

Position on Analytical Frameworks