Brandon Read
Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.
Recent Work
Past Work
- From 2024 to Spring 2025, I worked as a TechCongress fellow in the office of U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-California), serving as an advisor on technology policy. I led the Senator's efforts to highlight safety risks posed by AI companion chatbots in which he (1) raised these concerns during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on children's digital safety; and (2) sent oversight letters probing developers to explain their safety practices and ensure their products do not contribute to self-harm or suicide.
This marked one of the first oversight efforts in a wave of renewed attention following novel litigation against Character.AI for its alleged role in the death of a 14-year-old boy, whose mother would later testify at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing alongside parents with related product liability claims against C.AI and OpenAI. The subcommittee Chair has since opened a formal investigation into AI chatbot developers, and the Federal Trade Commission launched an inquiry into the impacts of AI companions on kids and teens. California and New York have since passed first-in-the-nation laws beginning to address these risks.