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AI Is Making Decisions
About Your Life.
You Deserve to Know.
Corporate lobbyists are passing laws to strip your right to know how AI systems make decisions about your life. This is happening in New Hampshire right now.
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You have a right to know when AI makes decisions that impact your life.
Right now, AI is being deployed to assess your housing application or whether health insurance will cover your diagnosis. If a system can say no to you and your family, you have the right to know why.
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The Problem
AI Is Already Making Decisions About You
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Your child's school — If your child's school adopts an AI tool that decides which students get extra help and which get flagged for behavioral concerns, you should be able to find out how that system makes those decisions about your kid. Your school board should be able to review it before it is used on any child in the district.
Your housing — If you apply for an apartment and a screening algorithm rejects you, you should be able to find out why, and your city should have the authority to require the company to explain how its system works before it is used on tenants in your community.
Your benefits — If a state agency uses an AI tool to process your benefits, your healthcare, or your eligibility for services, the caseworker handling your case should be able to understand how the tool works well enough to tell you why it made the decision it made, and your state legislators should be able to investigate if something goes wrong.
Your government — If your governor signs a multimillion dollar contract with a single AI company to serve 40,000 state employees who handle your data every day, you should be able to see that contract, know who recommended that company, and ask whether anyone involved had a financial stake in the outcome. That is what I did when Governor Healey signed with OpenAI, and thousands of you read that newsletter because you agreed.
These are not hypothetical situations. Every single one of them is happening right now, and every one of them comes down to the same thing: a system that can affect your life should have to explain itself.
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The Threat
In Six States and Counting, They’re Making Sure AI Never Has To
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The “Right to Compute” Act
Last year Montana passed the “Right to Compute Act” 50 to 0. The name sounds like it protects people, but what it actually does is give corporations the legal power to challenge any transparency or oversight requirement that your local or state government tries to put on an AI system. In plain terms, if your city passes a rule saying “before you use an algorithm to screen renters, explain how it works,” the company can sue your city and argue that the rule violates its constitutional right to compute.
Spreading Fast
New Hampshire has already introduced its own version. Idaho and Ohio have bills pending. A corporate-backed group called ALEC has turned this into a template bill that can be introduced in any state legislature in the country, and the organizations funding it do not have to tell you who they are.
From Washington
In December, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at stopping states from overseeing AI entirely, directing his Attorney General to sue states that maintain transparency rules and threatening to cut their federal funding, even though the Senate rejected that approach 99 to 1 and Congress stripped it from the defense bill. The executive order goes around both.
Two Directions at Once
From state capitols, corporate lobbyists are stripping your city's ability to ask questions. From Washington, the White House is stripping your state's ability to do the same. And here in Massachusetts, we watched it happen through procurement when the governor signed an AI contract without public input, with a company whose tools are simultaneously used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
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I am working on legislation to protect your community's right to know how these systems work before they are used on you and your family. It’s simple: before an AI tool is deployed on your children, your benefits, or your housing, you should have the power to ask how it works and set conditions to make sure it serves you.
The companies have lobbyists to protect their right to say no.
I am fighting to protect your right to know why.
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I have no corporate PAC, no teams of lobbyists, and no special interest writing my legislation. The other side has ALEC, dark money, and a presidential executive order. I have you.
To the parent who has been told “the system flagged your child” and could not get an answer. To the family that was rejected by a process nobody could explain. To everyone who has ever been told “I can’t override the system” and had nowhere left to go.
You deserved an answer. I am fighting to make sure you get one.
Fifty senators stood with the companies. I need to know how many of you will stand with your community.
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Yours in service,
Erika Uyterhoeven
State Representative, 27th Middlesex
Candidate, State Senate, 2nd Middlesex District
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