Kamala Harris
Former US Vice President
The former vice president served as the Biden administration’s de facto AI czar, arguing at the 2023 UK AI Safety Summit that AI harms already falling on ordinary people — deepfake abuse, biased algorithms, disinformation — are every bit as “existential” as sci-fi doomsday scenarios.
In her words
When people around the world cannot discern fact from fiction because of a flood of AI-enabled mis- and disinformation, I ask, is that not existential for democracy?
To define AI safety, I offer that we must consider and address the full spectrum of AI risk — threats to humanity as a whole, as well as threats to individuals, communities, to our institutions, and to our most vulnerable populations.
Biography
Kamala Harris (born 1964) served as vice president of the United States from 2021 to 2025 and was the Democratic nominee for president in 2024. Within the Biden administration she owned the AI portfolio — convening lab CEOs at the White House in May 2023 and leading enforcement of the administration’s safety agenda.
Redefining “existential”
Her defining AI statement came on November 1, 2023, at the US Embassy in London, on the eve of the Bletchley Park summit convened by Rishi Sunak. Pushing back on a debate she saw as fixated on machine-apocalypse scenarios, she ran through a litany — a senior kicked off his healthcare plan by a faulty algorithm, a woman threatened with explicit deepfakes, a father wrongly jailed by biased facial recognition — asking of each, “is that not existential?” In the same speech she announced the United States AI Safety Institute and new draft rules for federal government use of AI.
The speech drew fire from both directions: safety researchers worried it diluted focus on catastrophic risk, while accelerationists read it as a blueprint for expansive regulation. Harris insisted the administration rejected the “false choice” between protecting the public and advancing innovation, and the executive order she championed was built on disclosure rather than prohibition. After leaving office in 2025 she remained a prominent Democratic voice on technology accountability.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/kamala-harris