Independent Candidate Rebecca Prendergast Calls for Pennsylvania “Responsible AI Development Act”
BUCKS COUNTY, PA — Rebecca Prendergast, Independent candidate for Pennsylvania’s 145th House District, is calling for stronger safeguards governing advanced AI and the infrastructure supporting it.
Prendergast is proposing the Pennsylvania Responsible AI Development Act, or PaRAID, built around four principles: compute, cost, safety and accountability. While lawmakers are addressing data-center costs, resource reporting, development pauses and frontier-AI safety separately, PaRAID would connect them. Based on General Assembly proposals, it appears to be Pennsylvania’s first framework combining frontier-AI safeguards with data-center infrastructure, resource use, ratepayer protection and compute accountability.
“AI is driving the most consequential technological transformations in human history, and government is not responding fast enough,” Prendergast said. “PA can’t control global AI development, but we can decide what happens here.”
PaRAID targets the largest AI developers and computing facilities—not ordinary Pennsylvanians, small businesses, or everyday AI use.
COMPUTE: Heightened requirements for the most computationally powerful AI systems developed or trained in Pennsylvania.
COST: Protect families and small businesses from electric-grid and infrastructure costs through a token tax, with revenue funding retraining for workers displaced by AI.
SAFETY: Independent oversight and evaluations for cybersecurity risks, catastrophic misuse, dangerous autonomous behavior, and circumvention of human control.
ACCOUNTABILITY: Transparency around electricity demand, water use, computing capacity and infrastructure needs, while building permanent state AI expertise.
PaRAID would examine a temporary pause on new hyperscale AI data-center approvals while electricity, water, infrastructure and public-safety rules are established, and pursue a Large-Scale AI Compute Assessment based on computational capacity or electricity consumption. Revenue could support grid improvements, ratepayer protection, environmental mitigation, workforce programs and independent AI-safety expertise.
“No Pennsylvania family should see its electric bill increase to support increasingly powerful AI,” Prendergast said. “If this industry creates major infrastructure costs, it should pay them. If AI-driven automation displaces workers, it should help fund retraining.”
“The AI model, the data center powering it, the resources it consumes, the community costs and safety risks are one system, and we need to govern them that way.”
PaRAID is not aimed at generative AI tools like ChatGPT, but frontier systems that could approach superintelligence.
“This isn’t about banning ChatGPT or making Upper Bucks anti-technology,” Prendergast said. “AI has enormous potential, but responsible innovation means that we must understand the risk, protect the public and set rules before communities are locked into life-changing decisions.”
“Compute. Cost. Safety. Accountability. How powerful is it? Who is paying for it? Is it safe? And who is accountable?”
“The question isn’t whether AI will change Pennsylvania. It already is. The question is whether government will lead or spend the next decade reacting.”