Conclusion

Few serious proposals exist that would give American families and communities agency over how AI and digital technologies implicate their values and interests. Until we operationalize associational data rights, many of the known antisocial consequences of the digital economy, and rapidly emerging agentic AI economy, are likely to get replicated or even exacerbated. These patterns are leading to substantial political polarization and tensions on both the right and left, fueling concerns about the expansion of AI and the development of data centers across the country.

We need a new social contract for American families and communities who have grown increasingly frustrated and distrustful of industrial grade surveillance, manipulation, and extraction.

Policymakers have yet to strike the proper balance. Associational data rights provide a viable third way—that complements other efforts around a national data privacy floor—by creating new intermediaries empowered to embed the values of different communal, religious, and civic commitments into the social contract governing data and the digital economy. This communal governance layer will preserve the bedrock of American society by securing the privacy, control, and economic interests of families and communities in the digital age and the information economy for generations to come.