How can artists know if their creations are being used to train artificial intelligence? And if they are, should those artists be compensated? On today’s show we speak with Vermont’s Chief Data and AI Officer Josiah Raiche about the state’s role in regulating AI, and artist Jane Adams helps us parse the philosophical questions AI poses to the creative process.

On Capitol Hill last year, Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) introduced nearly a half dozen bills concerning AI. He’s vowed to continue those efforts during this new Congress.

Welch has also joined the influential Senate Finance Committee, alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). This committee deals with taxation, trade agreements, tariffs and government health programs. In an interview on Vermont Edition, Senator Welch explains why he opposes tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China proposed by President-elect Donald Trump, as well as his work on regulating AI.

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Peter Welch: The biggest concern I have is the impact on jobs, especially here in Vermont. Those tariffs mean that our manufacturers, when they’re importing goods that are, in part, that go into the production process, they have to pay a very significant increase, and that means they have to pass those costs on. So it threatens our competitive position, and it also results in higher costs for the consumer. So the major concern I have is, how will this impact jobs, and how will it impact Vermont consumers? And obviously, what happens in Vermont would be true around the country. Tariffs have always been a go-to approach by governments trying to be protective. Usually it’s failed, and in fact, tariffs had a very bad history right before the last depression. So it’s a tool that sounds good, because President-elect Trump says that it’s foreign countries that will pay. But what we’ve seen is, in reality, it’s the consumer who ultimately pays. Now there may be a place for some tariffs, like with China when they are dumping goods here. I think that’s a proper use for tariffs, because we shouldn’t allow China to use our country as a dumping grounds, where what they’re doing is undercutting our own competitive capacity.

Mikaela Lefrak: The Biden administration has broadened restrictions on Chinese firms.
 
Peter Welch: That’s correct, and I think that the situation with China reflects a place where tariffs are proper, because essentially, you’ve got enormous subsidies from the Chinese government to their manufacturers. They undercut our manufacturers, but it’s because not the marketplace, and they’re doing it better, but because they’re getting subsidies from the Chinese government. So that’s an area where I’m aligned with what the Trump concern is on tariffs, but tariffs on Canada, tariffs on the European Union, you know our competitors, but where they have labor standards that are comparable to ours, I don’t think that is going to be helpful to our consumers or to our industrial base

Mikaela Lefrak: So when it comes to the proposed Canadian tariffs, President Trump has vowed to impose this levy of 25% on imported Canadian goods, unless our shared border with Canada is made more secure by the Canadian government. Do you think that that border needs to be made more secure, and if not through this push and pull with tariffs, how do we do that?

Peter Welch: Well, number one, I do think our borders should be secure, and the northern border as well as the southern border. So we’re in agreement on that. Canada believes that we have much more of a problem with the southern border, where we sometimes get cooperation from Mexico and sometimes don’t, but generally we get cooperation from Canada. So we’re aligned there on trying to have a secure border. And by the way, at the southern border because of the overdue but finally implemented executive actions by President Biden, the numbers of entries are lower now than they were at the end of the Trump administration. That was overdue by Biden, but to use tariffs against Canada, where they’re cooperating with us, and where they’re our biggest trading partner here in Vermont, in our chamber of commerce in Chittenden County has raised the alarm about the impact on employers here and on our businesses. I think that’s a bad idea. I mean, I want us to have a strong economy here in Vermont, and that means to maintain a solid bilateral trading arrangement with Canada. I mean, we’re doing all we can, like for instance, to improve Amtrak service to Montreal. We want to get more people down here. We want to have pre-clearance up in Montreal, so folks who get on the train there can just come right to Burlington. So why undercut that with the use of tariffs as a tactical reason on the border? When in fact, we’re hand in glove, trying to cooperate mutually about keeping a secure northern border.

Mikaela Lefrak: So this new Congress is looking a little different than the last one. I found it interesting that in his initial announcement that he was joining the Senate Finance Committee with you, Senator Bernie Sanders said that it was going to be “extremely difficult to pass any meaningful pro working class legislation under the Republican controlled Congress.” Do you agree?

Peter Welch: I do. It is, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. In some respects, we’ve got two economies. The unemployment rate is low, the stock market is high, inflation is coming down. That’s been brutal on people. So we’re in a position that’s better than it’s often been in the past. And I think actually, Donald Trump’s going to inherit a pretty good economy. On the other hand, the reality is, for the past 40 years, most working people have not had a raise, so we’ve lost a lot of manufacturing jobs. It’s hollowed out many of our rural communities, and I think Trump really tapped into that in a very effective way. But the question is, what are the solutions he’s proposing? Will it help those folks who have been on the losing side, who really value their communities, want to be able to provide for their for their families. Why have independence and self reliance? Does it help them if we have another big tax cut for billionaires, for the major corporations? I don’t think it will, you know, I think we’ve got to focus on the things that really make a difference in affordability for Vermonters and Americans.

Mikaela Lefrak: I hear what you’re saying, but I also feel like there is this continued push by Democratic lawmakers to market the Democratic Party as the party of the working class, and yet we saw here in our last elections, Vermonters ousted a number of Democratic legislators from the state legislature because they felt concerned that those folks were not prioritizing affordability, a main working class issue.

Peter Welch: I think that’s right, and that happened in Vermont, but it also happened nationally. I mean, you saw Trump pick up support in Hispanic communities and Black communities and certainly the white working class. So that should be a wake up call for Democrats. The reality is that I think people want us to focus on the economy, and they want us to focus on affordability. And I think Trump tapped into that concern, and he did it effectively. What I’m really concerned about, and this is going to be something very much Bernie and I have to deal with on the Senate Finance Committee, is, are you going to help those folks who have legitimate concerns about whether government’s trying to help them so that they can be self-reliant and support their families. Does it really help where the top agenda item is essentially to have a tax cut for billionaires? So you’ve got a disconnect on the Trump talk and the Trump means of implementing the so-called agenda.

Mikaela Lefrak: Some big news happened just before the Christmas holiday. Congress passed this major funding package to avert a government shutdown, and it included more than $100 million, I believe, of disaster relief and infrastructure support for Vermont specifically. And you voted for this package, but there were some complications there on Capitol Hill, as there tends to. The version that did pass was different than the original bipartisan deal, which got stripped down after Donald Trump and Elon Musk called out what they said was unnecessary government spending, and they eroded all this Republican support for the deal. I was watching as Elon Musk posted more than 150 times on X about how bad the original version of this deal was. Bernie Sanders ended up not voting for it. You and Representative Becca Balint did. Why did you decide to vote yes?

Peter Welch: I was always yes. One of the major efforts that I made in the past two years was to get supplemental disaster funding so that the Vermont farmers, so that Vermont small businesses, so that our Vermont communities, where the roads and bridges were wrecked and where there was a huge burden of increasing property taxes, we had to get them relief. And the final version that passed, despite the Elon Musk and Trump criticism was very similar to the one that had been negotiated in a bipartisan way. Trump and Musk got in because Trump, at the 11th hour, the midnight hour, really wanted to have an increase in the debt ceiling so he wouldn’t have to deal with that when he was president. It really wasn’t about the merits.

Mikaela Lefrak: Are you concerned about Elon Musk’s influence over members of Congress?

Peter Welch: Very much. Yeah. I mean, what we are reaping is the effects of the Citizens United decision in 2006 which said money is speech. And before the Citizens United decision, individuals could give money, but there was a limit. You know, it’s like $5,000 in a political action committee, or individuals, like $3000. Musk contributed $277 million legally to the Trump campaign. Well, you not only get a seat at the table, you basically are at the head of the table when you give that kind of money. It should be everyday people who have the biggest influence on the political decisions that are made, not billionaires.

Mikaela Lefrak: President-elect Donald Trump is going to be inaugurated on January 20th. Do you plan to attend the inauguration?

Peter Welch: I do.

Mikaela Lefrak: Last July, about six months ago, you became the first Senate Democrat to publicly call for President Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race. Considering the results of the November election, do you still stand by that decision to lead the push for President Biden to drop out?

Peter Welch: That was a push from people who observed that debate that was just an absolute disaster. It showed real physical infirmity, and raised questions about his mental acuity. I think he’s quite competent, but it really was, I think, a death knell for his campaign. I was a strong supporter of President Biden, and I think he was an excellent president. The things he did to get us through to the other side of COVID, to have the economy recover, the CHIPS and Science Act, where he is putting a focus on manufacturing here in the United States, these are all signal achievements. So I was always for President Biden, but I didn’t see any pathway for him to win, and I thought we had to acknowledge what we all saw, and it couldn’t be unsee. And frankly, I do think the President, in the end, as he’s always done, made his decision to step aside based on what was best for the country. And we lost, but I think it would have been a much bigger wipeout had President Biden stayed in.

Mikaela Lefrak: You are here in Vermont right now. The plan is to get yourself down to Washington today. There’s a big snowstorm down there. What could the impacts of this kind of rare storm in Washington have on the goings-on of Congress, which just came back in session on Friday?

Peter Welch: It’ll have none, absolutely none. Today is an important day. It’s January 6th. I was there four years ago when we had the insurrection, when the Capitol was desecrated, when people, you know, the person who was shot that was about 20 to 30 feet from where I was. I was a floor above it, but I was in the Capitol when the mob attacked, and it was very, very dark day for the U.S. There is no one who’s questioning the outcome of the election. When I get there, I’ll be voting to certify the election as I did the last one, so I do not see that this weather event is in any way going to affect the outcome of the certification of the election of Donald Trump by the American people.

Mikaela Lefrak: Senator Welch, let’s turn now to artificial intelligence, which we’re going to be diving into more deeply on today’s Vermont Edition. Last year, you sponsored a number of bills related to AI. Why is this a priority issue for you?

Peter Welch: Well, AI has the potential, in, really, the likelihood of vastly transforming our economy. It’s like the telegraph or it’s like the internet. It’s going to be transformative. The question is, can we get out in front and establish some standards that are going to protect the public good and protect the benefits and minimize the harms?

Mikaela Lefrak: So talk to us about the TRAIN bill. This is one bill that you sponsored back in November that would make it easier, as I understand it, for people to find out if their creative work was used without permission to train artificial intelligence.

Peter Welch: That’s right. Transparency and responsibility in AI. Right now, the way AI works is that it gobbles up vast amounts of information, and that then trains the algorithms and then becomes a resource for the owner of AI to its own advantage. A lot of the material they use is that which is created by artists, by a writer, by a painter, by a playwright. And my view is that the rights of those creators — our artistic community — they have to be protected. And if their work is being used by the big AI companies to train their algorithms, my view is that those folks, because they have a copyright, they should have compensation. So this act would enable the content creators — the artist, essentially — to get a yes or no from the artificial intelligence companies. Are you using my work?

Mikaela Lefrak: Why introduce this bill as a Vermont senator? I mean, we certainly have a creative economy here in the state, but nothing compared to, say, Southern California or New York.

Peter Welch: Well, there’s two reasons. First of all, I serve on the Judiciary Committee, and it has jurisdiction over copyright. Second, Senator Leahy, the “Batman senator,” of course he established the real link between Vermont and the creative community, including the folks in Los Angeles, by protecting the rights of artists. And I’m serving on that seat where Senator Leahy occupied it. But also, you know, we’re incredibly proud in Vermont of our creative economy, in our artists, our musicians: Noah [Kahan], Phish, Grace Potter and their rights to be compensated for their work, especially when they’re Vermonters, I want to stand up for that

Mikaela Lefrak: Senator Peter Welch, thank you so much for speaking with me today and safe travels.

Peter Welch: Thank you.

Broadcast live on Monday, Jan. 6, 2025, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.

Conversation Moderated and Story Written by Mikaela Lefrak & John Ehrens, Vermont Public

Conversation Link: https://www.vermontpublic.org/show/vermont-edition/2025-01-06/sen-peter-welch-wants-to-better-regulate-generative-ai