Arvind Narayanan#527
For all the attention AI gets, data shows that the parties are still not adopting it as a major issue.
I've been playing with @derekwillis 's awesome data on party fundraising emails. As my plot here shows, AI is just starting to tick up as a Democratic talking point, but it's still very, very modest.
The Republicans' 2020-era freakout about social media remains much, much larger than the current AI freakout in terms of email focus...and that never amounted to much in terms of policy.
At the same time, policy proposals around AI are getting bolder, like Sanders and Trump floating national ownership---yet surprisingly, the party rank and file are actually moving pretty slowly to adopt AI as an issue, maybe because it's not very salient with the American public.
Will be very curious how this changes in the coming months. Seems likely Democrats may start messaging around it more...but maybe not, if we don't start to see meaningful employment effects.
Present Trump on Air Force One taking to the press:
Reporter: 'Sir, on AI companies, potentially taking these equity stakes, have you Spoken to Sam Altman or any of the-'
President Trump: 'No, there's a concept out there, there's so much money, and it's so big, that there are concepts where pieces could be given to the American public. Where the American public essentially becomes a partner with the companies and, I will tell you, yeah, I have, I have spoken with all of them. There's something very interesting about it where it almost becomes a partnership with the American public. And we'll look into that. I actually have a meeting scheduled in the very short, in the very near future with, did you know that? With all of the companies, and, we're talking about it. Where the American people can benefit from the success of AI. And by doing that they're going to like it better. Because we're leading China. We're leading everybody in the world with AI. And we want to keep it that way. It's probably the biggest industry maybe that we've ever seen.'
Reporter: 'Which companies-
President Trump: 'All of them.'
Reporter: ' Anthropic, SpaceX-'
President Trump: 'All the big ones yeah, all of them. They're all coming to the White House. Probably next week.'
Reporter: 'Is the idea that there would be dividends for the American-'
President Trump: 'I don't know. We're going to see. I mean, we're going to see. Sort of, it's like, you make them a partnership in this revolution. It would be a beautiful thing. It would make them rich.'
