Worries about unchecked AI are widespread, without an anchor in one party. Polling conducted for Edelman this month found that just 32% of Americans were “confident” about AI and just 17% wanted to see greater use of the technology in everyday life.
Democrats had a rollicking success in this month’s off-year elections, winning wherever they campaigned on AI limits. For example, several of their candidates pushed companies to pay more for their own energy when they build data centers.
That campaigning fit into the “affordability” focus that now drives every Democratic campaign. But the candidates who ran on it found more anti-AI sentiment below the surface. Attacking the industry worked every Democratic muscle.
Protecting children from the sometimes fatal advice of chatbots has felt like going after “Big Tobacco” in the 1990s; accusing Republicans of giving “Big Tech” whatever it wanted is the sort of anti-billionaire populism that’s second nature to most Democrats.
“People want AI, but they want to be protected from abuse,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said this week, explaining why all but one Republican senator joined every Democrat to oppose a federal law banning state regulation of AI. “The rich and the powerful control the Trump White House. In particular, the AI industry controls this White House.”
But now that ban on state regulation is back, and Republicans are openly split over what to do. MAGA-centric concerns about AI are drawing from the same angst that some Democrats have. Whose jobs could be lost? Aren’t chatbots and endless online slop compounding the male loneliness epidemic, or the decline of reading?
And when did anything good ever come of a federal law limiting what states can do?
“There should not be a moratorium on states rights for AI,” retiring Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wrote on X last week. “States must retain the right to regulate and make laws on AI and anything else for the benefit of their state.”
The industry is aware it has a problem. Josh Vlasto, the former Chuck Schumer adviser who works as spokesman for both the crypto and AI PACs, told me that Bores was acting as a catspaw of the effective altruism movement, which has nightmares about AI.
His broader pitch is that Americans can’t afford to get caught up in populist distractions and lose the AI war.
“This is a transformational technology that has unbelievable opportunities to create jobs, improve health care outcomes, improve education,” said Vlasto. “In terms of protecting kids and users, privacy, data privacy, intellectual property, and ensuring a strong transition to the next generation economy for jobs — who in the world would you rather have controlling that process? The United States or China?”
Bores simply shrugged at the well-funded opposition’s depiction of him.
“It sounds like they’re searching for a boogeyman,” he told me.
