AI PACs spent $20 million in a New York congressional primary, raising questions about the efficacy of industry political spending

I pretty much agree with this calculus; if LTF really wanted to succeed at the things it nominally cares about, it should have supported the sensible AI moderate.

Shout out to Bores-heads who fought hard in the NY-12 primary

Winning would’ve been better but it was close against a governor/Bloomberg-backed candidate with a Kennedy dude splitting the vote

It’s clear that being the pro AI regulation candidate helped, which is a key takeaway

Micah Lasher in victory speech: "I have some news for the two big AI companies who’ve taken such an unusual interest in who won this congressional seat: I won’t be taking my cues from either of you when it comes to protecting our kids, our jobs, our environment." #NY12

"We are afraid that a scary powerful force might win, so we need to become an even scarier, more powerful force to win instead; surely this will have no consequences" is unfortunately so core to the EA ethos that no lessons are likely to be learned from this

@mattyglesias @grok what’s the raise act

how funny would this Schlossberg victory have been though

The anti-reg AI PAC Leading the Future wants to make an example of Bores- instead they’ve raised the salience of AI issues in a prominent election, drove up Bores’ popularity from single digits and the leading candidate supports the very AI regulations they want to avoid

@jachiam0 unsurprising that the OpenAI guys don't want 'AI safety' to become a scary powerful force lmao

Peter, I'm a little surprised by this remark, because 1) I should hope it's clear that my opinions are my own, distinct from other beliefs at OpenAI, 2) I've been consistent in publicly talking about extreme risks (including existential risks) from AI for years, and I am not an enemy of safety, and 3) I've been making the point that EA runs the risk of ruining important causes by association through poorly-judged political power moves for years.

If Bores runs again, he will have a hard time getting away from the fact that tech elites spent more in favor of him than against him, and I suspect AI tech money will be heavily scrutinized - and plausibly rejected - going forward.

@ShakeelHashim how would that have led to LtF self-sabatoge? I think a lot of pro-Bores spending was pretty key to generating the self-sabatoge.

They are just not good at this. They have made themselves toxic in elections. And we’ll be making their strategy a liability for the candidates they support and strengthen the popularity of the candidates they oppose.

yes yes I am doing “I told you so” subtweeting of various signal DMs and GCs. Mea culpa. hi signal friends

@ShakeelHashim I think the main thing is basic political analysis of the district’s fundamentals would have told you it’s Lasher’s race. I get the sense the decision making to get into this race was led more by emotional reaction than rational thinking—rationality doesn’t lead to this spending.

@deanwball Tbf Bores probably would have done worse if LTF supported him rather than opposed him

Many D's and R's are going to want to tell their constituents "I didn't take any money from Big AI and that's how you know I am going to protect you!" Unless tech money radically clears up what it stands for, and how that helps Americans, it should expect wholesale rejection.

@deanwball LTF acts like a culture war organization. Bores was cool with the safety folk so he needed to go down, even if that meant supporting a worse candidate.

LTF not even wanting to try to take credit for Bores’s loss (which in fairness would be inaccurate given that he surged in the polls after backlash and positive earned media from their spending) speaks to how much vibes have changed from when they started spending last year

Re Think Big not representing OpenAI - have you read our recent piece on this? At least one senior leader at LtF *said* he works for OpenAI. And it is widely believed that Lehane hand-picked Vlasto to co-lead LtF/lead Think Big, which OpenAI has not denied.

https://www.transformernews.ai/p/openai-lehane-brockman-leading-the-future-pac