Mark Kelly urges Congress to pass his AI bill, saying ‘No one else is coming to the rescue’

U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) is urging Congress to regulate artificial intelligence to benefit the American workforce and keep large technology companies accountable.

Kelly called for urgent action during a Tuesday speech on the Senate floor, announcing plans for new AI regulation.

“I’m introducing the Make AI Work for Americans Act to make sure workers aren’t left behind and that Big Tech pays their fair share,” Kelly said. “The alarms are sounding. The signals are clear. No one else is coming to the rescue. … Let’s get this done now.”

How is Mark Kelly trying to enact AI regulation?

Big Tech refers to dominant technology companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI (Elon Musk’s company that makes Grok), Microsoft, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) and Meta.

“These companies are getting rich off of a technology trained on the wealth of humanity’s research, knowledge, and work, our ideas and discoveries,” Kelly said. “My bill would require them to give some of that wealth back to us by investing in the American worker through an AI Horizon Fund.”

The fund would require major AI and tech companies to contribute some of their profits toward worker training and infrastructure to meet growing power and water needs.

“We can’t expect corporations to help us out of the goodness of their hearts,” Kelly said. “I hear it from Arizonans every day. They’re worried. They wake up wondering if today’s the day their job just gets automated away, wondering if their kids are going to have careers in the future or have a future at all.”

How would AI Horizon Fund work?

The goal of the AI Horizon Fund is to make those businesses share the costs of their technology, rather than simply reaping the rewards, as Americans face rising expenses and potential job losses.

“The United States has been — and has to be — at the forefront of technology, as we have been for generations,” Kelly said. “AI is important to our national security, and it’s important to a thriving economy, and we need to find a path forward that protects Americans and our national interests.”

His bill would use money collected from tech companies to fund worker training, paid service opportunities that lead to careers, and support for people who lose their jobs, helping Americans adapt to a changing economy without sacrificing innovation.

Protecting workers as AI advances has long been a priority for Mark Kelly

Last year, Kelly introduced his “AI for America” roadmap, which proposed the fund as part of a broader push to hold the industry accountable.

During his Tuesday speech, he drew a stark contrast between his approach to AI regulation and that of President Donald Trump’s administration.

“While the people inside the industry discuss catastrophic damage and the chance that AI, and I quote, ‘will kill us all by the end of the decade,’ the White House is actively lobbying against regulation. Our president calls Americans’ fears a, quote, ‘hoax’ and a ‘sick conspiracy.’ He says that we don’t need new guardrails,” Kelly said.

In July, Trump’s White House released an “AI Action Plan” that emphasized the Republican Party’s commitment to building AI infrastructure and accelerating innovation.

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