Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed on Tuesday unveiled a proposal to freeze development of advanced AI models and data centers, seeking to connect with voters who have expressed deep concerns about the technology.
El-Sayed’s “AI Under Control” proposal would require tech companies to pause the training and release of the most powerful AI systems until policymakers develop new guardrails to limit the technology. He also supported the creation of a Cabinet-level government agency that would inspect labs building AI models, block release of dangerous products and order a shutdown of any rogue system if necessary.
El-Sayed’s decision to release the plan in the final weeks of the election highlights the Democratic Party’s growing efforts to capitalize on public anxiety about AI, as polls show the majority of Americans are wary of the technology and its rapid development.
Voters are “freaking out about AI,” El-Sayed told The Washington Post in an interview. “It’s one of those issues that has become a focal point of a lot of the fear that people have in this moment, about whether they’ll be able to have a job or not, about whether their kids will be able to have a job, about whether or not they’re going to have a data center foisted in their backyard.”
Crafting regulations to protect the public from the possibility that the companies building AI will lose control of these tools is one of the most important issues confronting the next Congress, he said.
The candidate is tying the issue to lines of attack he has used against his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, and President Donald Trump, who has rejected calls to slow down AI development and called for the tech industry to police itself.
El-Sayed acknowledged that the U.S. government is not likely to take many of the actions he is proposing while Trump is in the White House, but he said that the conversation needs to happen now and that the issue needs to be a focus of 2028 presidential debates. Some steps, such as restrictions on data centers, could receive bipartisan support, he said.
White House spokesperson Liz Huston said in response that “President Trump has been clear: America will lead the world in Super Intelligence. The Trump Administration is committed to accelerating innovation, ensuring the safe and responsible deployment of new models, and protecting the American people.”
Only 2 percent of Michigan voters said that AI and data centers were the most important issue in deciding their votes for Congress, according to a New York Times/Siena poll conducted in September. However, Democrats and independents were more likely than Republicans to say it was the key issue, and political operatives in both parties say it is a significant issue even for those who don’t list it as their No. 1 concern.
Michigan voters said El-Sayed would do a better job than Rogers at addressing data centers by an 11-point margin, according to the same poll.
Rogers in August endorsed a one-year moratorium on data centers in Michigan, after reports that he held at least $1.7 million in investments in companies that stood to benefit from the AI and data center boom.
El-Sayed’s plan builds off a proposal introduced by two prominent progressive lawmakers, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas).
The candidate said he has not yet spoken to any of the tech company CEOs who have called for a slowdown in developing AI technology, but he is speaking to people in the industry, as well as advocates who have raised safety concerns about the technology.
El-Sayed’s plan, like the lawmakers’ proposal, would ban recursive self-improvement, a technique in which AI systems are used to design and build their successors. Tech companies say AI systems already are designing and training a significant percentage of new models. El-Sayed says that shows why regulation was needed “a long time ago,” and he proposed having regulators “inside a lot of these models and sandboxes, watching the every move of the models themselves.”
He also called for the creation of new protections for employee whistleblowers who expose AI dangers, a mandatory reporting process for instances where AI systems go rogue and a national plan to respond to an AI emergency, which would involve regular government drills.
“What’s the point of Congress, what’s the point of the federal government if it’s not protecting you from things that could destroy your future?” El-Sayed said.
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