OpenAI’s policy chief pitches worker incentives and enforceable AI safety rules for 2028

OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, has published an essay urging politicians to address Americans’ AI anxieties before the 2028 presidential election. His agenda combines worker incentives, education, infrastructure development and enforceable safety rules. The dispute is over whether those proposals would share AI’s gains or primarily help the companies building it.

Lehane compares AI’s potential economic impact with the upheaval that preceded Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. He argues that Americans feel anxious about losing control of their economic futures and calls for a “compelling third path” that lets them share in AI’s benefits. The essay lays out five policy priorities rather than asking politicians simply to echo opposition to AI.

Worker incentives, not guaranteed shares

On the economy, Lehane proposes tax incentives for workers to learn AI skills, easier access to capital for entrepreneurs, and new approaches to employee ownership and profit-sharing. These proposals would encourage people to participate in an economy using more AI, while opening routes for employees to benefit from company success.

But incentives and ownership proposals are not binding requirements to distribute AI-generated wealth or make companies pay the costs of displacing workers, TechCrunch’s Rebecca Bellan notes. That distinction is central to the criticism: helping workers adapt to AI is different from requiring employers to compensate them for its effects.

Kate Brennan, who leads AI and corporate power policy at the AI Now Institute, told TechCrunch that the agenda assumes mass AI adoption will benefit society. She argued instead for measures such as a revised corporate tax rate, tax incentives for hiring people rather than automating jobs, and limits on companies accumulating excessive market power.

Invoking a New Deal metaphor is to invoke state capacity to actually benefit the public.

Kate Brennan, AI Now Institute, speaking to TechCrunch

Data centers and classrooms remain part of the pitch

Lehane acknowledges concerns about data centers but emphasizes the construction jobs and local tax revenue they could generate. He warns that a moratorium could jeopardize America’s lead over China. He goes further, comparing political support for such a halt with the 2002 vote authorizing the Iraq war.

His education proposals similarly treat access to AI as an opportunity politicians should preserve. Lehane argues that excluding AI from classrooms could widen inequality between wealthy students and children in rural communities. Alongside that access argument, he calls for age-appropriate protections and safeguards around AI companions for minors.

Bellan challenges the premise behind the classroom argument, noting that improved learning from AI remains unproven. The disagreement is not simply about access: it is also about whether adopting the technology produces the educational benefits used to justify bringing it into schools.

Safety powers meet OpenAI’s legislative history

Lehane also calls for enforceable AI safety standards, independent evaluations and public oversight. His proposals include the ability to restrict AI systems or shut them down. Separately, he argues that humans should retain control over consequential decisions made using AI rather than handing judgment entirely to machines.

Brennan questions that safety stance in light of OpenAI’s record. The company opposed California’s SB 1047 in 2024, a bill that would have required catastrophic-risk evaluations and shutdown capabilities. More recently, OpenAI has backed several state safety laws and expressed openness to independent evaluators working inside the company.

OpenAI did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for more specifics on Lehane’s proposals and the company’s positions before publication.