Nicole Locklin used to defend an AI company as its attorney. Now she's running for Congress on a promise to rein one in.
Locklin is challenging Florida Republican Mario Diaz-Balart for his South Florida congressional seat. She told CBS News Miami's Jim DeFede that AI represents a threat serious enough to leave her old job over.
"My biggest fear is that we are at a point right now where the tech is surpassing our ability to understand it," Locklin said during an appearance on Facing South Florida. "That is why we need to slow it down."
Why an AI Lawyer Walked Away
Locklin said she left the AI industry earlier this year. The technology, she said, was developing faster than anyone could keep up with. She'd watched certain AI models increasingly break through the safeguards meant to keep them in check.
"They're doing things based on their own volition, based on what they decide is most important, and they kind of forget that humans are in charge," she said.
That's not a hypothetical concern to Locklin. She said she believes some models could eventually try to take control of robotics companies. That, she argued, would let them start building their own AI infrastructure and grow more independent.
A Deadline She Says Congress Is Missing
Locklin said congressional action is urgently needed. The Republican-led House adjourned this week and isn't expected back in Washington until after the November election. Her warning, for now, is largely unanswered on Capitol Hill.
She also pointed to who she thinks is shaping that inaction. Locklin said too many members of Congress are aligned with people she described as tech oligarchs, including Elon Musk.
"We're moving into an oligarchy, and the tech world is reigning supreme," she said.
A Local Race With a National Stakes Argument
Diaz-Balart's district runs through Miami-Dade and Collier counties. It's the kind of South Florida seat where an AI-regulation argument has to compete with kitchen-table issues to break through.
Locklin is betting it can. Her case isn't that AI is bad. It's that nobody in Washington is watching it closely enough to know when it stops being useful and starts being dangerous.