(TNND) — Federal policy on artificial intelligence regulation might shift when Democrats take control of Congress in January.
California Rep. Ted Lieu, a member of the House Democratic leadership team, said in a post-midterm election news conference that the new majority would hold AI hearings and usher in “reasonable guardrails on AI.”
Lieu accused President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans of making “a conscious decision” over the last couple of years “to let the AI industry run wild.”
He called that “a bad decision” both politically and on policy.
Common Sense Media Founder and CEO Jim Steyer, who advocates for youth digital safety, issued a statement following this week’s election that voters clearly seek “powerful guardrails on AI.”
He pointed to an NBC News exit poll that found over half of voters said AI and data centers were a “crucial or major factor” in their vote for Congress.
But Steyer said Washington “has completely failed” to hold AI companies accountable for potential harms.
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Common Sense Media launched a Youth AI Safety Institute earlier this year and has flagged concerns with a number of popular AI products, such as ChatGPT for Teens and Google AI search.
Common Sense Media Chief Advocacy Officer Danny Weiss told The National News Desk on Thursday that the new Congress could and should revisit a couple of bills that would effectively address narrow but important concerns over AI.
One is the bipartisan GUARD Act, which Weiss said would protect kids from potentially negative effects of using AI companions.
Another is the bipartisan AI LEAD Act, which would create a liability standard for AI systems and allow individuals and governments, such as state attorneys general, to sue AI companies for alleged harms.
Weiss said Congress does need to address “the bigger question” of whether AI is “out of control and going to do whatever it wants.”
He said that could be addressed in what’s called frontier model legislation, of which some states have passed early versions. Frontier model legislation would require companies to have advanced models independently audited and evaluated for safety before releasing them.
“But they're going to have to come to an agreement very quickly on a couple of basic things,” Weiss said. “And I think protecting kids and families from known risks is very doable, and it doesn't prevent you from doing other things.”
Weiss said bills like the one addressing AI companion protections for kids "ought to be something they do right out of the gate."
California Rep. Ted Lieu speaks during a press conference at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee headquarters on Nov. 4, 2026, in Washington. (Photo by Tom Brenner/Getty Images)
Anton Dahbura, an AI expert and the co-director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Assured Autonomy, said he expects the federal government to change its approach to regulating AI.
“It's the right time to adopt a rational approach to this very powerful technology,” Dahbura said. “And it's going to require a balance of the private sector working with the government, and because of the nature of the cutting-edge technology, universities and academia all working together to really focus on being able to take advantage of the extreme benefits of this technology but reducing as much as possible the risks.”
New AI-centric laws are inevitable, Dahbura said. And he said existing criminal laws that weren’t written specifically with AI in mind aren’t enough.
Weiss said Trump has “made it pretty clear that he believes the race against China is more important than putting safety controls on AI.”
“And I think the midterm election spoke differently,” he continued. “I think the voters said in the midterm election, AI safety is really important, and we got to get on it.”
Neither Weiss nor Dahbura are expecting smooth sailing for federal AI regulations, but both said it’s necessary.
Common Sense Media said AI regulation shouldn’t be a partisan issue.
Dahbura, similarly, said this shouldn’t be an ideological issue.
He said the best approach involves “pragmatic” steps to mitigate the potential harms of AI.
“That's just the way it is,” he said. “It's the nature of the technology.”
And Dahbura said a national safety framework around AI shouldn’t stop the U.S. from competing with China.
“I think that that's overblown,” Dahbura said. “I think that, in fact, one could make a case for the opposite, that having well-thought-out regulations and guidelines to reduce all of the bad things that can happen can just avoid a lot of problems. And by avoiding problems, we can accelerate the technology even faster.”
