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artificial intelligence
California's Tom Steyer Proposes Jobs Guarantee for Workers Displaced by AI
"Most politicians still fail to recognize or downplay the threat of AI to workers, at the behest of Silicon Valley," said one veteran labor organizer.
May 08, 2026
In a first for a statewide candidate, California gubernatorial contender Tom Steyer on Friday proposed the creation of a wealth fund that would be paid into by artificial intelligence companies, with the money being used to fund jobs in key sectors of the economy.
The billionaire hedge fund founder-turned-environmental advocate, who has come out in support of a proposed tax on billioionaires' wealth and a single-payer healthcare system for the state and has described himself as a "class traitor," told Wired about his proposal to use a "token tax" to fund what he called the Golden State Sovereign Wealth Fund.
Big Tech companies would be taxed “a fraction of a cent for every unit of data processed” for AI uses, and some of the money directed to the fund through the taxation plan would be earmarked for jobs for people who lost employment due to the expansion of AI.
Jobs in healthcare, housing construction, and modernizing the state's energy infrastructure would be prioritized in the fund.
Steyer told Wired the plan would make California "the first major economy in the world" to guarantee jobs to people who have been displaced by AI.
“People all over this state are terrified that AI is going to hollow out this whole economy and they’re going to lose their jobs. Young people are worried they’ll never get a job,” Steyer told Wired. “We believe this can be an amazing transformational technology in many ways, but we’re not in the business of leaving people in California behind.”
The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas released a report Thursday showing that for the second straight month, AI was the leading reason companies cited for laying off workers. AI-related job cuts accounted for 26% of the 88,387 layoffs the firm recorded, with 21,490 people losing their jobs due to AI.
“Technology companies continue to announce large-scale cuts and are leading all industries in layoff announcements. They are also often citing AI spend and innovation. Regardless of whether individual jobs are being replaced by AI, the money for those roles is,” said Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray, and Christmas.
Last October, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) released an analysis showing that AI and automation could eliminate nearly 100 million jobs in a decade—yet President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are aggressively pushing to stop states from regulating the industry.
Trump signed an executive order late last year calling on the Department of Justice to create an AI Litigation Task Force, which would target laws and proposals to require studies on the impact of AI on jobs, protect people from AI companion chatbots, and regulate the technology in other ways.
“Not regulating AI doesn’t seem remotely reasonable,” Steyer said Friday.
At a debate earlier this week, Steyer said AI cannot be allowed to "create 12 trillionaires and millions of people who lose their jobs."
"The number-one thing that we have to do is make sure AI is a tool for workers and not a replacement of workers," he said. "And we absolutely need to own part of it."
We can't let AI create 12 trillionaires and millions of people who lose their jobs. The people of California need to share in the wealth AI creates. pic.twitter.com/ts2Ru1J5IX
— Tom Steyer (@TomSteyer) May 6, 2026
Charles Idelson, former communications director for National Nurses United, applauded Steyer for "addressing a growing danger for California's working class."
"Most politicians still fail to recognize or downplay the threat of AI to workers, at the behest of Silicon Valley," said Idelson.
Steyer said in a memo that in addition to protecting Californians from job loss, the fund created by the token tax would "strengthen the foundation of the state’s economy, invest in our communities, and create beautiful, vibrant public spaces."
“To support these efforts," said the campaign, "Tom will also invest heavily in training and apprenticeship programs across the state.”
Steyer's plan for AI also includes an expansion of unemployment insurance and the creation of the AI Worker Protection Administration that would adopt new rules to protect workers' rights as AI continues to develop.
Devin Murphy, director for digital mobilization for Steyer's campaign, said the state faces a "defining question" after its tech industry helped build the AI economy: "Who benefits from it?"
"Tom Steyer is putting forward one of the first serious plans to ensure AI strengthens the middle class," said Murphy, "instead of hollowing it out."
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Maryland Residents to Pay $1.6 Billion More in Power Bills Due to Out-of-State Data Centers: Complaint
"Maryland customers have neither caused the need for these billions in new transmission projects, nor will they meaningfully benefit from them," said Maryland People’s Counsel David S. Lapp.
May 08, 2026
A top state utilities regulator is calling foul on an effort to shift the power cost of out-of-state artificial intelligence data centers onto Maryland residents.
Maryland's Office of People's Counsel on Thursday filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) against electric grid operator PJM Interconnection objecting to plans that it said would force residents in the state to pay $1.6 billion in data center-driven transmission costs over the next decade.
The complaint states that the transmission cost allocation methodology PJM is using "broadly socializes" the cost of increased power demands that is being driven by AI data centers.
"That result is unjust and unreasonable and violates the cost causation principles that have long governed transmission cost allocation and that this commission has repeatedly affirmed," the complaint says. "PJM’s tariff imposes these costs on Maryland electric customers even though Maryland customers do not meaningfully cause nor benefit from those investments."
The Office of People's Counsel pointed to the massive number of data centers built in neighboring Virginia as a primary culprit for added strain on the electric grid.
"Amidst national data center growth, Virginia stands as the epicenter," the complaint says. "Virginia is the largest data center market in the world... As of December 2024, data centers represented 3.6 GW of demand... reflecting, since 2013, a 660% increase in megawatt-hour consumption."
This explosive growth in energy demand is only expected to intensify over the next several years, the complaint continues, noting that "PJM projects 32 GW of peak load growth across its territory by 2030, of which approximately 30 GW is attributable to data centers."
As a remedy, the complaint asks FERC to "require PJM to take immediate action to assign data center-driven transmission costs to the PJM zones where the data center customers are located" instead of shifting the cost to Marylanders.
Commenting on his office's complaint, Maryland People’s Counsel David S. Lapp said that the attempt to saddle Maryland consumers with a $1.6 billion bill for facilities outside the state's borders shows "PJM’s cost allocation rules are broken."
"Maryland customers have neither caused the need for these billions in new transmission projects," Lapp added, "nor will they meaningfully benefit from them."
Data centers have become political lightning rods in recent months, as residents from across the country object to their mass resource consumption, which is leading to a major spike in utilities bills, as well as the noise pollution they generate.
As CNBC reported earlier this year, PJM currently projects that it will be a 6 GW short of its reliability requirements in 2027 thanks to the added demand from data centers.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) earlier this year introduced a bill that would impose a nationwide moratorium on AI data center construction “until strong national safeguards are in place to protect workers, consumers, and communities, defend privacy and civil rights, and ensure these technologies do not harm our environment.”
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The Impossibility of Endless, Cheap Gas
The price of cheap oil is exploitation and death, including death of children and the destabilization of our climate, which all risk future generations' viability on Earth.
May 08, 2026
When I was a sociology graduate student and teaching assistant, we learned about the global fight over oil, that the center of oil dependence is in the Middle East, and that eventually we would go to war with Iran. Fast forward 20 years later and the predictions of my professor have reached fruition. As many of us are now catching up to, roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply flows through the Strait of Hormuz, whose shipping lanes are currently closed and controlled by Iran and Oman.
As fraught relations with Iran continue to play out, and regardless of our political alliances, it is important for us to realize and remind ourselves that crude oil, petroleum, is a finite and non-renewable resource. Earth’s reserves took millions of years to form, and we are using them up at an alarming rate. If oil demand continues to increase over the next few decades, we are not in a position to meet that demand.
Scientists have been predicting that peak oil, the time when oil production and demand is highest, will come and go, but AI will change that. Data centers, large buildings housing servers, data storage, and related equipment, require elaborate power and cooling systems to run and further tax our energy grid. According to research, there are over 4,000 data centers in the United States with 643 in Virginia alone. In 2024, these data centers consumed more than 4% of our country’s total electricity and 26% of total electricity supply in Virginia. Fifty-six percent of the energy needed for AI data centers is from gas and coal; natural gas supplies over 40% of this electricity. In order to meet these needs, utility companies are expected to increase the average residential bill. The AI trajectory is not only fossil fuel dependence, it is continued extraction where environmental problems are converted into revenue. This trend of profit for some at the expense of many people and the environment will accelerate our depletion of our natural resources, and we should all be concerned.
Access to cheap fuel is not a right. It is a subsidy built on violence, both societal and environmental harm. The price of cheap oil is exploitation and death, including death of children and the destabilization of our climate, which all risk future generations' viability on Earth. In the face of such consequences, surely we do better.
In learning how to decouple our existence from consumerism and fossil fuel overdependence, we need to move beyond our shopping choices.
The only solution to expensive gas is to consume less gas. To be sure, this is a rock and a hard place conundrum. We rely on our vehicles to get to work. Most of our cities lack high bikeability. And, most Americans live paycheck to paycheck and a small increase in the price of gas is too much on an already strained budget. The federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour has not changed since 2009.
Meanwhile, our federal government has gutted The Environmental Protection Agency, climate change policy, and environmental regulations and the supreme court has developed a shadow docket whose first action was to roll back environmental protections. Our structure is crumbling any semblance of respect for our planet and leaning hard into anthropocentrism, the “humans first” logic that parallels President Donald Trump’s America first faulty logic.
What are the costs of being first? From a sociological viewpoint, increased demands for goods, technological pursuit, militarization, and war without long-term risk assessment and a society overly dependent on consumerism and endless growth needs to be checked. A society unwilling to critically reflect on nor willing to change its self-destructive trajectory is not a sustainable one. Gas prices should reflect their true costs, not only to us, but to our planet and to future generations.
How we move forward from this mess is up to us. While individual actions, such as knowing what we buy, how large our ecological footprint is, and that eating less meat is good for the environment, are important, they will not be impactful at scale unless we can connect them to organized and sustained collective action. We need viable political options. In learning how to decouple our existence from consumerism and fossil fuel overdependence, we need to move beyond our shopping choices. We need to get to know our political candidates and vote for people who prioritize both social and environmental sustainability. Elections are right around the corner, and we can all learn more about the candidates and measures.
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