Powerful A.I. Super PACs Duel Over U.S. Midterm Elections

Theodore Schleifer, New York Times (gift link): The bad blood between the super PACs comes as powerful Silicon Valley companies race to shape the future of A.I. regulation. The groups are two of the biggest spenders in this year’s midterm elections, laying out nearly $24 million and promising that over $100 million more is on the way. Their financial duel is effectively a proxy war between two of the biggest A.I. companies, Anthropic and OpenAI. One super PAC, Public First, is allied with Anthropic, while the other, Leading the Future, is aligned with OpenAI. If those names sound familiar to you, it could be because I covered this topic last month. Schleifer’s story is, of course, far more in-depth and better-sourced — and, as an outsider, it is a story that does not leave me feeling particularly confident in the A.I. policy prospects in the world’s most powerful country. The amount of money A.I. companies have on hand is truly staggering. Of course all of them are spending tens of…