Anna Gomez

There's a lot of engineers who would say, we've had AI for a while, but now it's really becoming clear that it's going to affect everybody everywhere.

And I think that we really need to make sure that all communities are prepared for that.

Now, all communities do not have access

to sufficient capacity broadband that they actually can participate in this AI economy, and that is an issue.

The administration is spending tens of billions of dollars to deploy high-speed broadband.

You and I can argue whether they actually allocated the money

correctly.

But the thing that the administration is not focusing on then is the users themselves, the consumers themselves.

The administration basically, by executive order, I think, I'm not even sure it was from that, ignored a digital equity grant program that Congress authorized and funded that could be used for digital literacy for communities that need to learn how to use the internet and now in the AI economy, how to participate in the AI economy.

This administration also absolutely pays no attention to affordability.

We had affordability programs here at the FCC that the commission voted to stop, one of those being providing hotspots to schools and libraries to provide to low-income students and patrons so that they can have broadband at home.

So I really wish that we would focus on improving any programs that we have, which we do have a program that's called the Lifeline Program,

which is a very small program that provides support to households for voice and broadband connectivity.

I think that that can be improved.

Instead, we're finding ways to weaken it.

And that's problematic.

I keep saying, if we build out these tens of billions of dollars of fiber, satellite, and fixed wireless services to households, and they don't know how to use it, or they can't afford to use it, then we're building bridges to nowhere.

So I really think we should be focusing on that.

I do think that we have some authority in that area.

One thing that we had proposed to do that this administration has not picked up, for example, and this is a media issue, was to require political ads that use AI to disclose that the ads used AI.