The AI Super PACs Trying to Influence the Midterms
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Open AI’s CEO signed a letter in 2023 acknowledging that AI might cause human beings to go extinct. More recently, Anthropic’s CEO said that AI will “test us as a species.” Many Americans seem to believe them: A March poll showed that a majority of voters think the risks of the technology outweigh the benefits. Now, as the midterm elections approach, tech-affiliated super PACs are investing tens of millions of dollars to try to overcome that animus.To understand their strategy, think back just a few short years to a playbook established by the cryptocurrency industry. During the 2024 election cycle, crypto and venture-capital firms poured funds into a super PAC called Fairshake, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars supporting pro-crypto candidates and attempting to undercut anti-crypto candidates. The plan worked. Major politicians (both Republicans and Democrats) supported by Fairshake and its affiliate PACs defeated their opponents; Congress became marginally more accepting of crypto; and the industry notched several major policy wins the following year.AI-backed super-PAC groups are now adopting Fairshake’s model, but under profoundly different circumstances: About half of American adults say that they use chatbots such as ChatGPT, whereas just under one-fifth say that they’ve used or invested in crypto. AI is both ubiquitous and largely distrusted. No leading candidates are advocating for a ban. Instead, the question is how this industry ought to be regulated.Two super-PAC groups offer two different answers. One, Leading the Future, which was co-founded by the venture-capital powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz, has embraced a regulation-light approach to AI, focusing on “identifying, maintaining, and growing pro-AI candidates.” It has raised more than $140 million, r