AI that works for Americans

Americans did not show up on any recent Election Day and vote for new technology that would bring sweeping changes to our way of life. Yet AI is here, and its power demands a strategy that promotes innovation, protects the American dream, and shapes our next 250 years. 

Artificial intelligence has the potential to be the most life-changing, life-giving, and life-saving technology the world has ever seen, exceeding even cars, medicine, and electricity.

But change happens at the speed of trust. Right now, more than three-quarters of Americans simply do not trust AI or its builders. 

One reason is that Americans aren’t convinced that AI’s power is pointed in the right direction. If the headlines were full of healthcare breakthroughs and tools that support people at work without threatening their jobs, they might feel differently.

Another reason: AI feels like yet another technology nobody asked for. It comes after a 15-year grab from social media for our attention and attachments, making parenting, focusing, and actually connecting harder than ever.

A third reason is that Silicon Valley’s values are often at odds with those of everyday Americans. The tech industry seems to treat any reasonable safety measure as an attack on innovation, while ignoring the risk that their dreams could eliminate the American dream for millions. 

We should reward entrepreneurs for their hard work and risk-taking. But those who stand to gain the most immediate financial return, generally speaking, are not the best stewards of policy in any period of innovation.

At the Alliance for a Better Future, we start from a simple conviction: America’s greatness grows out of America’s goodness. The best of this technology can be unleashed to lift up every American, not just those who own it.

Picture this: a family business with the same data, tools, and reach as a Fortune 500 competitor. A doctor who catches a diagnosis early and uses individualized gene mapping to treat it. Hours of paperwork collapsed into minutes. An AI agent that manages home repairs, meal plans, and errands for busy parents. AI built from the first line of code to keep children safe, not keep them scrolling.

That can happen — if we work together to make it a reality.

Which leaves two questions: how should AI be governed, and who does the governing? Our children and grandchildren will live with those answers, so we need to get them right.

A wave of doomerism has convinced many Americans that the only responsible move is to stop the technology, hand it completely over to Washington, or wait for Europe to write the rules for us. But America doesn’t give up because we have concerns. We build, test, iterate, and improve safety as we go. We didn’t outlaw cars because they were dangerous. We built guardrails, brakes, and traffic lights, and the world followed. Same with medicine, airplanes, and electricity.

Two truths should anchor what comes next:

First, American AI has to earn trust. Aerospace has rules. Medicine has rules. Trucking has rules. Nobody calls that socialism. AI will have guardrails. The only question is whether those guardrails are written by Americans, for Americans, or handed to us by foreign regulators and Silicon Valley lawyers asking for our trust yet again.

Second, American AI has to win around the world. Not place. Win. This technology will decide whether our way of life continues or dies. Fully backed by its government, China is running hard with no intention of playing fair. If we hesitate, we don’t get a safer world. We get a world where the most important technology in human history is controlled by those intent on destroying our way of life. Our competitive edge is the key to our survival as a nation.

Getting the balance right means being specific. Children and the elderly protected online from sexualized chats, suicide coaching, and scams. Financial information kept private. AI agents kept on a leash, so no system can do damage before anyone notices. And a hard commitment that this technology creates work rather than erasing it, because the dignity of work is the backbone of families and communities.

President Donald Trump understands the stakes. As he and his administration prepare a new executive order to provide national security guardrails for AI, they bring the right instincts: leverage the good, lower the risks.

We’ve done this before. In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy told the country that we were going to the moon. A bold declaration. We weren’t the only ones trying, and the stakes — national security and economic supremacy — could not have been higher.

We got there first because we got the balance right. We didn’t blindly fire capsules at the sky and shrug when things went wrong. We also didn’t bury the program in studies and permits. American values, American engineering, and American discipline built a space program the world still hasn’t matched. The country got richer and safer for it.

The assignment now is similar: get the best out of AI while keeping our children safe, our nation secure, and our economy sound. 

OPINION: TECH INSIDERS ARE BUILDING BUNKERS. TRUMP AND XI NEED TO BUILD AN AI TREATY

Trump knows this can, and must, be done.

It’s time to make AI work for America.

Janet Kelly is CEO of Alliance for a Better Future.