The fight over AI’s harms has played out state by state. One US senator wants to make it federal, all at once.
Ed Markey has a long list of worries about artificial intelligence. Thirsty data centres. Workplace surveillance. Biased algorithms. Chatbots that prey on children. On Friday the Massachusetts Democrat tried to turn that list into law.
In an exclusive with the Guardian, Markey unveiled a package of bills he calls an “AI accountability agenda,” built around “taking power back from big tech.” The 79-year-old senator has already written close to a dozen AI bills. This is his attempt to tie them together.
Prove your data centre won’t do harm
The centrepiece is a bill due in the coming weeks. It would force any company that owns or plans a data centre to get certification from the Federal Communications Commission before construction begins. That certification would have to confirm the site “will not harm the public interest.”
Under the draft, the FCC would weigh a proposed data centre’s effect on air and water quality, noise, energy costs, grid reliability, local wildlife, and the local economy. It would consult the Environmental Protection Agency and zoning boards. “We need to make sure these datacenters don’t turn into pollution bombs,” Markey said.
The people behind the bills
Markey’s pitch leans on people he says are already being harmed. A rural Georgia resident who cannot drink her tap water after a data centre went up nearby. Parents who say their 14-year-old son died by suicide after a chatbot groomed him. A woman who sued over an algorithm she says denied her housing. A veteran nurse pressured to trust an AI’s judgment over her own.
Each case maps to a bill. Markey wants independent bias audits before high-stakes algorithms ship. He wants to bar employers from leaning mainly on automated systems to hire, fire and promote. He wants chatbot firms stopped from letting children grow emotionally dependent on them. And he wants hospitals to keep a human override for AI decisions.
A federal answer to a patchwork
Markey’s argument is that safety should not depend on your postcode. “Every American is entitled to these safeguards,” he said, warning that a state-by-state patchwork “would leave too many people exposed.”
That is also where Europe comes in. The EU already runs the kind of up-front, precautionary regime Markey is reaching for, through its AI Act, GDPR and online-safety rules. Washington has done almost nothing at the federal level since ChatGPT arrived in 2022, even as Silicon Valley itself has started asking for rules.
Long odds
The politics are unforgiving. Most of Markey’s bills are stuck, and he is one senator in a Congress that has favoured speed over guardrails. He says he is optimistic anyway. “Ultimately, there will be national solutions that will be put on the books,” he said.
There are a few footholds. In March, the Senate passed a bill tightening online safety rules for children, banning targeted ads to minors and limiting their data. Other lawmakers are separately pushing to make Big Tech pay AI’s power bills, as those same data centres drive up electricity costs and, in one case, contaminated a city’s water.
Markey traces the whole fight back to his father, who lost a finger to a factory machine before modern safety laws existed. His point is that technology keeps outrunning the rules meant to contain it. AI, he argues, is just the newest version of that gap.
