The plan lays out a federal agenda to protect the public from the rising costs, surveillance, and job losses of a booming AI economy being built without safeguards or community input 

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BROOKLYN and QUEENS, NY —  Vichal Kumar, public defender and Democratic candidate for New York's 7th Congressional District, today released a comprehensive federal plan for artificial intelligence. The plan, “AI in NY-7: On Our Terms, Not Theirs,” is built on a single principle: that the public, not a handful of tech companies, should decide how AI is used. It provides a detailed outline on how the federal government can resist AI’s harms, reclaim public control, and take bold steps to reimagine four areas where AI is reshaping daily life: data center development, worker automation and displacement, privacy and surveillance, and safeguards for children. 

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For Kumar, the throughline is the same one that has defined his two decades as a public defender: protecting people from systems built to operate without accountability. 

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“AI is being built by a handful of billion- and trillion-dollar tech companies, with developers putting data centers in communities that never asked for them, and families being handed the bill,” said Kumar. “Higher electric bills. Jobs automated away with nothing to replace them. Surveillance pointed at immigrants and protesters. Our kids’ safety and wellbeing is being threatened. I have spent my career holding unaccountable systems to account, and that is the fight I am bringing to the tech companies and developers, for a fair and just use of AI. We can have an AI economy that works for all of us. But only if we build it on our terms, not theirs.” 

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At the center of the plan is a new institution: a Federal Artificial Intelligence Commission (FAIC) with real enforcement authority, not just an advisory role. The FAIC would license and audit AI in hiring, housing, lending, and healthcare, require transparency from developers on the data, energy, and water their systems use, set national standards for data center siting, and refer violations to the Department of Justice. 

“When radio reshaped American life, we created the FCC. When the stock market crashed in 1929, we created the SEC,” said Kumar. “Every time a new technology has transformed this country, the government has answered with real oversight. AI demands the same leadership. The FAIC has to be built with the people AI affects, which is all of us, not written by the companies that profit from it.” 

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Kumar notes that the harms are already here, and that they hit NY-7 directly. In New York City, regulators approved a roughly 9 percent Con Edison electricity rate increase over three years, and surging AI electricity demand threatens to push bills higher still, with data centers projected to account for as much as 44 percent of new U.S. electricity demand by 2028. ICE and other federal agencies are buying location data from commercial brokers to sidestep the Fourth Amendment and deploying facial recognition against protesters. Insurers are facing lawsuits for using algorithms to deny medical claims. The absence of federal rules, Kumar argues, is a choice. 

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The plan follows the “Resist. Reclaim. Reimagine.” framework that has defined Kumar's campaign in four key areas: 

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Data Centers 

Resist: Utility bill hikes that make working families pay for the AI buildout, and grid strain and water depletion in our neighborhoods.

Reclaim: Local control over what gets built in our communities.

Reimagine: A 3-year data center moratorium, local grid and water upgrades, an AI dividend paid directly to host communities, and binding Community Benefit Agreements (CBAs) on noise, water, and design. 

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Workers 

Resist: Automation used to cut wages, break unions, and discard people's experience and training.

Reclaim: The right to good jobs close to home, and the dignity of human labor.

Reimagine: A guaranteed right to bargain over AI at work, transitional income for displaced workers, and free retraining at CUNY and local trade schools. 

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Privacy and Surveillance 

Resist: Government purchases of location data, federal facial recognition, and algorithmic discrimination in hiring, housing, and lending. Reclaim: Control over your own data, and due process when an algorithm makes a decision about your life.

Reimagine: A comprehensive federal privacy law, and a guarantee that a qualified person, not an algorithm, makes the final call on any denial of care. 

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Children 

Resist: AI-generated child sexual abuse material, and the diversion of federal investigators from protecting kids to immigration enforcement. Reclaim: Classrooms where teachers, not chatbots, lead learning.

Reimagine: Mandatory age verification and parental consent for AI products, serious penalties for AI-generated abuse material, and federal investigations that cannot be reassigned away from protecting children. 

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Kumar's plan arrives as AI has become a defining issue in New York races and the national debate, from a proposed federal data center moratorium to a growing fight over who pays for the AI buildout. Kumar is the only candidate in the NY-7 primary to release a detailed AI agenda. 

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The full plan is available here.