Lehane’s essay comes after Democrats won control of Congress in the midterm elections amid widespread voter frustration over the cost of living. He observes that Americans today feel similarly anxious about losing control over their economic futures and pitches AI as a path to greater prosperity for Americans willing to embrace it.
Kate Brennan, who leads AI and corporate power policy at the AI Now Institute, told TechCrunch the essay marks a notable shift from OpenAI's previous policy agenda, which focused on accelerating development, reducing regulatory barriers, and expanding infrastructure. '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.'
Lehane’s essay lays out five policy priorities spanning worker protections, education, AI safety, and data center development. He suggests tax incentives for workers to learn AI skills, easier capital access for entrepreneurs, and new approaches to employee ownership and profit-sharing, but those proposals are not binding requirements that would ensure workers share in AI-generated wealth or that companies pay the costs of displacing workers.
On data centers, Lehane notes concerns about them while emphasising the construction jobs and local tax revenue they could generate. He warns that politicians who support a moratorium on data centers could jeopardise America’s lead over China, comparing that stance to the 2002 vote to authorise the Iraq war.
'All of it is predicated on benefiting from AI's upside,' Brennan said, adding that it would be more sensible to see proposals such as tax incentives for hiring humans rather than automating jobs, and ways to prevent companies from amassing outsized market power.
Lehane also calls for enforceable AI safety standards, independent evaluations, public oversight, and the ability to shut down AI systems. But Brennan called these stances disingenuous, pointing to OpenAI’s history of opposing legislation designed to impose such measures, including California’s AI safety bill SB 1047 in 2024, which would have mandated catastrophic risk evaluations and shutdown capabilities. The company has more recently shifted some of those positions, backing several state safety laws and expressing openness to independent evaluators embedded in the company.
Throughout the essay, Lehane ties middle-class success to participation in an economy increasingly shaped by companies like OpenAI. Whether his proposals would meaningfully redistribute power or subtly entrench it remains unclear.