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Bysiewicz says artificial intelligence has both 'tremendous' positive and negative potential
Lieutenant governor emphasizes that Lamont Administration wants to develop CT Option to lower health care costs
By Scott Benjamin
BROOKFIELD – Her two daughters were born in the early 1990s when there were more state legislators than web sites and Internet early-adopters read famed sports journalist Dick Schapp’s columns on Prodigy.
“Who would have thought that social media would be their careers,” Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz (D-Middletown) remarked of her daughters – Ava and Leyna - now each in their 30s.
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One daughter works in social media for a “tech company” and the other is employed in that field by advertising agencies.
In November 2003, economists W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm wrote in The New York Times about “The Great American Jobs Machine.”
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This was the day when colleges were started to expand t heir online course offerings and you could play Chess with a competitor in Taiwan from your desktop computer.
The two economists wrote that the United States had experienced ,“A relentless and enormous recycling of jobs and workers” over generations and the Internet would add, not subtract positions.
There were now “hundreds and thousands of jobs for webmasters, an occupation that didn’t exist as recently as 1990,” Cox and Alm stated.
However, now than 20 years later, the tech companies are racing to capture artificial intelligence. It reportedly has boosted the stock market. Will it eliminate jobs?
“Too early to tell. I think there is tremendous positive potential, but there also is tremendous negative potential,” Bysiewicz commented. I think it is possible that it will create new jobs as we saw with the Internet.”
“The question is: How do you use huge amounts of data for the public good?” she said during an interview at a Brookfield Democratic Town Committee Meet The Candidates event recently at Twins on Junction Road.
Earlier this year Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) signed bipartisan artificial intelligence protection legislation that, among other things, requires companies to notify if their job applications are applications screened by artificial intelligence.
“We’re making sure that artificial intelligence is not used to the detriment of consumers and kids,” Bysiewicz commented.
She cautioned that more legislation may be needed.
“I think we have only scratched the surface,” Bysiewicz explained.
She and Lamont are each seeking a third term on the same ticket. Since Connecticut adopted a four-year term in 1950 no governor has served for three full terms.
Bysiewicz is on the statewide ballot for a sixth time – having also won three elections as Secretary of the State.
Brookfield Democrat First Selectman Steve Dunn has applauded her for being so accessible that within months after she became lieutenant governor in 2019, he had already had four conversations with her and she would occasionally call him to offer help.
Former Bethel First Selectman Matt Knickerbocker is now the Democrat candidate in the 32nd state Senate District. He has said Bysiewicz had almost become a coach, calling him to find out how many doors he knocked on when he canvasses.
In remarks to the audience, Bysiewicz underscored that Lamont are seeking to develop a CT Option health care plan with state Comptroller Sean Scanlon (D-Guilford), who also attended the Meet The Candidates event.
Katy Golvala of CT Mirror has stated that the legislation would direct the state Office of Policy and Management to study the feasibility of a plan that “would be designed by the state, but run by private insurers.”
Lamont told Patch.com this summer that, “Medicaid costs are going up, small businesses can’t afford health care. They have no purchasing power. It is a big priority for me to bend the curve.”
“Some hospitals cost a heck of a lot more than others,” he said. “We’re trying to get state employees, retirees and small businesses to go to places where you get the best value. No co-pays, no out-of-pocket. That would bring down the cost of health care for everybody.”
Bysiewicz said Lamont also is attempting to develop an extensive early childhood system that would create 20,000 pre-school seats by 2032.
On another topic, she said their platform also calls for more spending on special education costs in the school districts in an attempt to lower the property tax burden in municipalities.
Lamont told Patch.com earlier this year, “That’s a really growing piece of your budget and now its 25 percent and next year it is 35 percent of your budget. You’re a small town with three kids with special needs that you didn’t anticipate. You’re sending them an hour and a half to Massachusetts and it is costing you $200,000 a year. Your property taxes explode.”
Bysiewicz urged residents to take advantage of early voting, since illness or family emergencies can prevent citizens from getting to the polls November 3, Election Day. She said she plans to cast her ballot on Monday, October 19, the first day of the two-week early voting schedule.
However, with early voting there was a 23 percent turnout of Democrats in Connecticut for the August primary in which Lamont easily defeated state Rep. Josh Elliott (D-Hamden). That is six percent below the turnout when Lamont easily dispatched Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim in the 2018 Democrat gubernatorial primary.
“I don’t know how we force people to vote,” Bysiewicz said. “But there may be ways to get to 100 percent participation.
Miles Rapoport (D-West Hartford), who immediately preceded her as Connecticut’s secretary of the state, co-authored a book on mandatory voting.
He has stated in Ct Mirror, “It turns out that there are 26 democratic countries around the world that use ‘universal voting.’ Thirteen of them are our Latin American neighbors, from Mexico to Chile to Uruguay. Belgium was the first country to adopt universal voting, in 1893. A remarkable example is Australia, which adopted universal voting in 1924 and has had 90% turnout in every election since then. In its election last year, turnout among registered voters was 90.7%.”
Rapoport wrote that people could choose to select “none of the above” when the vote and that those who don’t participate would be assessed a small fine that could be paid through community service.
The Connecticut Voter Participating Task Force is currently studying the issue.
Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas (D-Norwalk), who also attended the Meet The Candidates event, told Patch.com in August has said that she supports mandatory voting but believes there should first be education in the schools on the provisions including the importance of voting and the fines assessed for not voting.
Resources
Interview with Susan Bysiewicz, Patch.com, on Sunday, October 4, 2026.
Remarks by Susan Bysiewicz, Brookfield Democratic Town Committee Meet The Candidates event, on Sunday, October 4, 2026.
https://ctmirror.org/2026/02/04/connecticut-can-lead-toward-100-voter-participation/
https://ctmirror.org/2020/08/17/its-time-for-connecticut-to-require-ever...
