Rep. Sam Liccardo on Feb. 26. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Freshman Rep. Sam Liccardo, who represents Silicon Valley on Capitol Hill, is looking to win back a key industry he says Democrats lost.
Why it matters: Liccardo — who came out on top of a highly contested race to replace former Rep. Anna Eshoo, one of the loudest voices on the Hill for tech — is helping roll out the New Democrat Coalition's AI plans as chair of the innovation & technology working group.
- Axios spoke with Liccardo Wednesday morning after he said he convened freshmen Republicans and Democrats to meet with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. They discussed "flexible" approaches to regulation where there's incentives to follow best practices and a preemptive federal standard.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What are you hoping to accomplish with the New Dem innovation agenda?
We saw through the last election cycle more than a few tech leaders tilt to the right, and those who didn't still express frustrations.
- I heard from them and many others that while the Democratic Party was the party of innovation under former Presidents Clinton and Obama, they sense we have lost our way since.
- So this represents an opportunity for forward-leaning members of our party to take leadership in supporting innovation that supports not just the entrepreneurs, but American workers.
What did Democrats do that turned off Silicon Valley so badly?
I can tell you my district, I know it remains blue, and I have about half of Silicon Valley.
- But among those who felt frustrated, including some who continue to be Democrats, I heard a lot of frustration about excessive regulation, a lack of appreciation for the need to engage constructively with tech, to learn and understand the technology before we regulate and enact legislation in very specific areas.
What do you make of the speed in which a lot of these AI models are being deployed, given that they do risk displacing a lot of workers?
The important issue, seems to me, is for us to recognize as policymakers that we need to accelerate our work, rather than pretending that we can slow down the rest of the world.
- And as all too often the case, technology moves much faster than the law or policy.
Many proposals are out there to regulate AI and support workers. What do you mean when you say that it's policymakers who need to accelerate their work?
There's a lot of interesting and creative ideas. We have not seen Congress act on many, or in some cases, any of them, right? And so we've all been waiting for additional privacy policy to emerge for about three decades.
- And so, you know, we go on and on, and AI certainly presents us with now an even faster timeline of technological development.
- So yes, we need to roll up our sleeves and get to work and actually put structures in place now.
- In some cases, it may simply mean that we need to create an agency and give that agency authority and flexibility to be able to be nimble and respond to rapidly changing imperatives of technology.
