Let the federal government audit decision-making AI programs and require fixes
Artificial intelligence
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
The audit power described here belongs to the federal government. Companies can still deliver much of the substance by opening their high-stakes AI systems to independent testing and publishing the results, and investors are pressing them to. The AFL-CIO Equity Index Funds filed AI transparency proposals at Apple, Comcast, Disney, Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery in 2023, and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility asks technology companies to adopt accountability and due diligence for AI. The industry's own political operation is the documented obstacle to giving any regulator this authority. Google, Meta, OpenAI and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged federal preemption of state AI laws, and the House passed a ten-year moratorium on state AI enforcement in May 2025 without hearings. Meta followed in September 2025 with a multistate super PAC built to elect candidates who favor light-touch AI rules. Majorities of both parties already want government able to audit these systems and order fixes, and no obstacle stands between that support and the outcome except this corporate political influence. We judge the lobbying to be the linchpin holding back progress: owners changing what their companies fight for in Washington and the statehouses can release the block.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Common Ground of the American People: Artificial Intelligence, Program for Public Consultation / Voice of the People, 2026 (study February 2024)
- Artificial Intelligence Transparency will Fight the Dehumanization of the American Workforce, says AFL-CIO Equity Index Funds Shareholder Proposal, AFL-CIO, 2023-10-19
- Digital Rights and AI Accountability, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, accessed 2026-08-28
- The House Is Close To Passing a Moratorium on State Efforts To Regulate AI, Center for American Progress, 2025-05-15
- Meta launches lobbying effort to target state AI laws, CIO Dive, 2025-09-24
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Represented American Baptist Home Mission Societies and more than 30 co-filers on a 2026 Amazon proposal on AI human rights accountability, then helped launch a vote-no campaign against four directors after Amazon excluded it.
Filed proposals for AI transparency reports and a board AI oversight committee at media and technology companies in 2024.
Investor Views on AI Oversight: What Do Proxy Votes Tell Us?, Sustainalytics, 2025-05
Engages technology companies to adopt accountability and human rights due diligence for the development and use of artificial intelligence.
Digital Rights and AI Accountability, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
5 campaigns on record
Account for human rights risks tied to the company's AI and cloud services, including Project Nimbus, immigration enforcement surveillance and Ring camera deployments.
With United for Respect Education Fund, more than 30 other co-filers represented by Investor Advocates for Social Justice
Result: Excluded by Amazon on April 20, 2026 after the SEC stopped reviewing Rule 14a-8 exclusion requests in November 2025
Five organizations launched a vote-no campaign against four directors and United for Respect Education Fund filed a floor proposal for an independent AI and automation advisory council.
Asked Amazon's board to commission an independent third-party assessment of how the company's use of artificial intelligence, including algorithmic productivity quotas, affects the human rights and safety of Amazon's own workforce, including warehouse workers.
Result: Proposal failed; exact vote percentage not confirmed in the sources retrieved for this research. Filed under SEC Rule 14a-8.
we found no documented change confirmed in the sources retrieved.
Publish a transparency report on the company's use of artificial intelligence and the ethical guidelines and board oversight applied to it.
Result: 24 percent support at the June 3, 2024 meeting
Investor Views on AI Oversight: What Do Proxy Votes Tell Us?, Sustainalytics, 2025-05
Establish a board committee dedicated to overseeing the deployment of artificial intelligence and its human rights impacts.
Result: 10 percent support at the May 22, 2024 meeting per Sustainalytics
The 2024 Amazon Proposals, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2024
Two separate resolutions asked Amazon to stop selling its Rekognition facial-recognition technology to government and law-enforcement agencies, and to commission an independent study of the technology's effect on civil rights and privacy.
Result: The proposal to halt sales to government agencies received 2.4 percent support; the proposal for an independent civil-rights and privacy study received 27.5 percent support.
We found no documented change in Amazon's Rekognition sales policy that resulted specifically from this 2019 vote in the sources reviewed; Amazon defended the product, saying its use was governed by its existing code of conduct.
Amazon shareholders reject facial recognition proposals, TechCrunch
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Common Ground of the American People's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.