Congress must act now on AI
Sponsored by The Boston Foundation The Best of CommonWealth Beacon OPINION (Illustration via Pixabay by geralt) Congress must act now on AI May 31, 2026 By Lori Trahan When Brooks Brothers shut down its longtime clothing factory in Haverhill in 2020, it didn't just close a building. It ended careers that workers had spent decades building and sent a familiar shudder through Merrimack Valley communities like Lowell and Lawrence that know all too well what boarded up mill buildings leave behind. The company cited costs. To them, the math was simple, even if here at home, we knew the human toll was not. After decades of offshoring and automation hollowing out American manufacturing, the workers left behind in Haverhill didn't need a study to tell them what was coming. They needed Congress to act years before they got handed pink slips. On artificial intelligence, we still have a chance to move before similar damage is done, but t...