Organization Sign On

 Insolvent AI-related and data center companies should be allowed to fail, and their executives should bear the financial consequences of that failure. If financial institutions face insolvency or illiquidity due to a crisis, the government should follow the resolution processes established after the 2008 crisis, not bail them out through bespoke exceptions. Where AI-related companies meet critical infrastructure needs, those functions should be run in the public interest.

In the aftermath of a crisis, communities may be hit hard. Crucial needs for families and communities must be met—starting with housing, healthcare, childcare, and expanded unemployment support—and we should help state and local governments continue to provide necessary programs and services if budgets take a hit. Areas saddled with defunct data centers should be provided funding for infrastructure and holistic economic redevelopment, and Big Tech firms should be made to pay for remediation costs. The federal government must address the needs of modest investors reliant on their retirement accounts for economic security and retirees whose pensions face major AI-related losses.

AI-related firms, the financial firms backing them (e.g., private equity, venture capital, and private credit funds, and large banks) and their executives must be held legally accountable for unlawful actions  that enable a crisis, including through civil and criminal penalties. Legal remedies for wrongdoing should include directing ill-gotten gains back to communities and to pension holders, retail investors, customers, workers, creators, and/or other stakeholders found to have been defrauded, deceived, discriminated against, stolen from, or otherwise harmed.

Banking and finance should support a just and sustainable economy, helping create good jobs and build the things we need, not extract from working people and communities on behalf of a handful of billionaires. We need new rules that: constrain the cycle of finance-driven booms and busts where the already rich and powerful become even more so and the rest of us pay the price when bubbles pop;  require all financial firms to follow basic rules, not take advantage of endless loopholes and exemptions, and have transparency and accountability standards for all companies’ finances;and focus banks on making credit available for families and businesses of every size, not financial engineering  that benefits  Wall Street insiders and mega corporations at the expense of everyone else. 

To build an equitable tech sector, we should break up the extreme corporate concentration of Big Tech and AI. Government should fully enforce our privacy and worker rights, prevent mega-mergers and vertical integration, and make sure the internet and the digital infrastructure we rely on every day works for people, not for maximizing billionaires’ profits.

Big Tech, AI firms, and data center companies need to be transparent about how they are financing the bubble. These companies should not be allowed to keep offloading the risks onto the public. Big banks, private equity firms, venture capital funds, and insurance companies must stop juicing the numbers in ways that increase the risk of a crisis that hurts us all.