OpenAI Hires Schumer’s Daughter and GOP Veteran to Focus on State AI Policies

Dot察 Beating AI News: OpenAI has appointed three new state policy leads. The most notable is Jessica Schumer, daughter of U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who previously served as Chief of Staff to the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama and led Amazon’s public policy efforts in New York. At OpenAI, she will oversee policy and partnerships in the northeastern United States. Another new hire, Caulder Harvill-Childs, previously worked on public policy at Meta and served as an advisor to Georgia State House Speaker Jon Burns, a Republican; he will now lead efforts in the southeastern U.S. Thomas MacLellan will focus on state-level cybersecurity policy, bringing experience from Palo Alto Networks, Symantec, and FireEye. OpenAI is increasingly focusing on individual U.S. states, a strategy it calls “reverse federalism”: rather than waiting for Congress to pass uniform federal legislation, the company is pushing major states like California and New York to adopt similar AI regulations, thereby creating de facto national standards. OpenAI has publicly noted that California, New York, and Illinois are already aligning on cutting-edge AI safety rules.