Lobbying Strategies and Future Influence

Support for NPR and the following message come from Washington Wise. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. Washington Wise from Charles Schwab is an original podcast that unpacks the stories making news in Washington. Listen at Schwab d. com slash Washington Wise Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Tama Keith, I cover Politics. I'm Eric McDaniel, I cover Congress. and I'm Shannon Bond, I cover teechnology. Today on the show, groups linked to the artificial intelligence industry are spending tens of millions of dollars to shape congressional races this year Shannon, there is a lot of money in politics. What's the AI industry's play here? Yeah, I mean, this industry is just the latest to realize that if you spend money on getting candidates elected, that might have good outcomes for you. But we're really seeing is that this year's midterm elections have become proxy battle in this sort of ongoing war over how AI should be regulated You know, and there they think there is widespread bipartisan recognition in Congress that lawmakers do need to set some rules around this technology, which is being developed really quickly, being deployed really quickly, has huge consequences for the economy, for jobs, for people's energy bills At the same time, despite that bipartisan consensus, all efforts to advance federal legislation so far have stalled out But the AI companies and AI interests are not waiting around for a bill to be on the table. They really want to be involved in picking who is going to write that kind of legislation. So what we've seen is that AI focused superPCs have already spent over forty three million dollars on congressional races this cycle That's according to open secrets, which tracks campaign spending And then there's even more being spent when you add in local races, you know states like California, Texas, where there was a lot of interest among state lawmakers about regulating AI. And so we're just seeing lots and lots of interest, and it's breaking down in pretty interesting ways among these companies. And this is playing out in a big way in one race that you guys have been following quite closely It's the race to replace the retiring Democratic Cgressman, Jerry Nadler. He's from New York City Eric, that primary is today, can you just explain why this race in particular is getting so much AI money? I mean, in part the reason there's so much money here is it's New York's twelfth Conggressional district, which is right in the heart of Manhattan. You need a lot of money to get any attention at all. The other one is because one of the men running is a prominent state assemblyman who helped lead the charge on state AI regulation there. His name is Alex Boris. He's an ex palenter employee which is a big AI firm and prominent government contractor founded by Trump ally Billionaire, Peter Thial. The laax regulation folks have helped to raise Boris' profile with the amount of money they've spent attacking him. Then the pro safety standard AI folks threw in their cash to defend him. So now we've seen, I don't know, twenty five or twenty six million dollars in this race and now Borris is in a dead heat with a former mayayor Bloomberg staffer, Micah Lasher. and that's despite all of the other really famous names in the race like George Conway or Kennedy Syion Jack Slosberg. I think they are internet famous, if nothing. Yeah. there you go. Shannon, Eric mentioned that there are like pro regulation and anti regulation, AI groups, canan you just like untangle who these groups are that are spending money in this primary? Almost all of this outside spending that's come in is coming from two groups. and they are broadly aligned with open AI on one side and anthropic on the other side. Those are like the two big leading US AI companies. That's Chat GPT and Claud. Exactly. So they compete over everything, right? L customers for their chat bots investors, they're both planning to go public later this year. they compete over staff. They have wildly different approaches in a way when it comes to thinking about how AI should be built, commercialized, governed. Anthropic was actually founded by dissidents who left openpen AI because they felt like the company was wasn't focused enough on safety And so you have these two networks of pAacks that are affiliated with these two sides. So on the one hand, there is leading the future It was funded by open AI investors, big investors Andreason Horowitz, as well as the company's president, Greg Brockman And then you have public first which was funded in part by Anthropic and has been explicitly positioned in opposition to Leading the future. So leading the Future was the one who came in initially opposing Boris in New York twelve And basically kind of targeting him because he was involved in this state legislation, it has taken this position really highlighting the risks. If you get regulation wrong, it'll be a risk to innovation, it'll be a risk to the US winning the AI race with China. It's argued for a national approach you sort of a federal framework of AI safety and regulation versus what it calls a patchwork of state r And then Anthropic aligned public first, is really kind of more lined up with Anthropics's position, generally supporting more regulation, including at the state level And so it came in defending Boris And so together, you know, they have now spent more than twenty million dollars in this this primary, you know, as Eric said, and it's a safe blue seat. Yes, in an expensive media market, but like this is just, you know, the kind of money you're not typically seeing, you know in this kind of race. And I should note here that Anthropic is a financial supporter of NPR. Shannon, I'm wondering if you're just like a regular person at home watching TV, are you gonna be able to tell from the ads that they are being funded by AI companies or people allied with AI? It's a bit of a mixed bag. So some of the early ads against Boris from this, group aligned with open AI investors you know pointed out specifically,, we don't want this state patchwork of rules. mean, this is the wrong approach to AI regulation. But they'd have also just taken like kind of much more straightforward political attacks, know criticizing his past employment at Palantier you know, just like really kind of going very personal. and then kind of talking about other issues. you know, actually, ironically, there was a recent ad that was sort of highlotighting he's not being funded from people in New York. It's coming from AI companies in California, you know, an ad brought to you by an AI company in California. But also it's like sort of classic campaign money Exactly. And so you know it's a little bit all over the place. Boris has talked about his approach and this is sort of his signature legislation, this state bill. But certainly AI is not like the main theme of this race, despite the fact that so much of this outside money coming in is coming from AI groups. All right, well we are going to have the results of that New York race and many others on the pod tomorrow But one thing I'm wondering given that AI is on both sides in this race When the dust settles with this one, do you think there'll be any lessons that can be drawn about the political influence of this industry? Just at the thirty thousand foot level, this is all kind of an acknowledgement. All this money is an acknowledgement that the future on AI is still unwritten from a regulatory perspective, right? These companies know that everyone in Washington at this point agrees that AI is too big to ignore. the White House has been involved. Congress has been having task forces and chit chats and fireside, whatevers, but they've not moved from the chalkboard or the drafting table to the permanent record yet. So there's a lot of opportunity to influence not just what the rules are, but who is writing them, which is why we're seeing all this campaign spending. All right, well, we are going to have more on that aspect of it when we get back, but we're going take a quick break right now This is our glass On this American life, when we like is a good mystery Sometimes about really big things But most times little mysteries of the best. Our Lost and foundound is currently filled with pants. I don't know I've never seen this happen. This is true. This is true. Mysteries of every size Each week This American life Whver you get your podcasts NPR's tiny desk can't come to you. I mean, it's a desk, but the tiny desk contest tour can. New York City join NPR's tiny desesk contest winner, Cure for Paranoia at Warsaw this july ninth. It's all the NPR Tiny Dk ennerergy minus the office furniture Get your tickets now at tinydesktour. org Your favorite toys are back in Toy Story five, and they're facing some new competition the dreaded tablet How will Buzz and Witty handle kids glued to screens? And how does this new movie compare to others in the franchise? We get into it on NPR's pop culture happappy Hour, Listen via the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts and we're back A recent poll from Pew found two thirds of Americans say AI is advancing too quickly And more people expect negative effects from AI on themselves in society than think it will be a positive So I'm wondering is all this spending on congressional campaigns trying to address this public perception problem I think so. I mean, I think this is mostly self interest, right? Like Anthropic and open AI and every other AI company has a lot of interest on the federal rules that will govern how they their businesses. But it is a concern for lawmakers and policy advocates who are weighing in on all of this because if the public isn't bought into either the approach to regulating AI or AI itself, then you know, all of the things that people interested in the United States economy and like general life in the country aren't going to be able to deploy it in the way they want to. If you don't believe in AI or data center expansion, all of those things, then It's going to be really hard for you to get behind like investing a lot of money in beating China in an AI race, right? Like investing federal money. Right, yeah. Or just like devoting federal attention and like figuring out how to Um, you know, support say scientific research into AI or any of those things, right? Like Yes the government and AI companies don't eventually invest into getting the public on board, then the whole regulatory environment is going to be much different than I think, you know, any one of these companies would hope for. You know, it strikes me that In the beginning, social media companies, which were a new technology many years ago, they had a bit of a halo around them And it took a while for the public sentiment to turn on them But with AI, public sentiment starts out in a much worse place than it started out with those companies. Yeah, I think that's right. AI is a little bit different than social media in that It is, I think much more aligned with like traditional business and industry generally, right? It's not like considered a domain of like I don't know, like fun or recreation or whatever kind of social media and Facebook started out as, right? This is kind of explicitly of the professional world now There are two things to know with like where this is starting in Congress. One is No one I talked to thought regulation was coming this year before the midterm elections. It's too complex to sort out with tiny majorities during a campaign season, toooo many big questions on approach remain. And two, the big fight right now, at least, isn't what rules to put in place, but how much should be done by Congress versus the State House? And this is an issue that Shannon talked about with these groups weighing in on, right? There's differences of opinion within the AI industry And it's also not a partisan red versus blue fight. The split is more kind of industry boosters who see this as a competition with China and a way to grow the economy and all of those things. and more I don't know. I might call it like populist or pro consumer tighter guardrails folks who are more worried about safety and economic opportunity If I had to characterize it, I'd say many Republicans want to limit states from making rules to limit the overall number of regulations that these AI companies have to contend with. But there are also some folks on the left who want limits on states to avoid a patchwork of rules. One of those folks is Adam Kovaevich, she's founder and CEO of this group called Chamber of Progress, which is a center left Hch policy group And he outlined to me the federal rules he wants to see and the concerns he has with state regulations. We can do things like set standards for frontier models for algorithmic discrimination for transparency, for fairness And unfortunately, we're seeing a creep of blue state laws on those topics which end up becoming kind of a de facto national standard, but that's not the best way to regulate AI And then you've got folks from the more conservative policy world and progressive policy world who want to see states be able to exercise their own judgment here, because historically states have moved more quickly on regulation. Here's Daniel Cochrane. He's a senior fellow at the Family First Tech Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies. The group says it works to strengthen family life and advance the welfare of children. What we've seen over and over again is thatress has essentially fiddled under the influence of big tech lobbyists States like Texas and Florida and Utah They've been leading the charge to hold these companies accountable. We need them to be able to respond quickly. and that's really what our federalist system is designed to allow. So obviously a lot of contours here, it's not red versus blue, straight up, and there's a lot of opportunity, I think we'll see after the midterms for cross party work I mean, it's so Part of me is very skeptical because I have followed Congress's attempts to regulate other industries and they often, especially when it's a new technology tied to knots and then don't really do anything. And I think that there's kind of a long history of that Is this any different I mean, it hasn't happened yet, right? Like there was a report during the one hundred and eighteenth Congress. We're in one hundred and nineteenth now. So say eighteen months ago on an AI task force, and we haven't seen legislation move We haven't seen action this Congress outside of some proposed ideas on children's safety related stuff and some deep fake legislation. I mean, I think this is going to become just too massive a part of the U S. economy not to touch at all. And I think the other thing we're seeing is that the AI companies are looking around seeing what has worked for other industries. and a big thing happening here is they're taking a page from the crypto playbook. Back in twenty twenty four, there were super PCs aligned with the crypto industry that spent more than one hundred million dollars in elections that year And you got results. They helped get several pro crypto candidates elected. know Congress has passed a bill favorable to the industry. know, Trump has signed executive orders favor to the industry. And you know it's pretty explicit this playbook. There's lots of overlaps here. So there's one of the big pro crypto superPCs has shares donors with leading the future, the The pack backed by open AI investors and one of the strategists of that pC is a spokesperson for the crypto pack. So you they've seen that there is a return on investment in terms of putting money into elections to help choose, as Eric says,, the people who are going to be at the table and who are going to be making these laws. Well in President Trump was as explicitly pro crypto a candidate as you could get Exactly. You know whereere he falls in AI, I think is a much more complicated question, as we've seen with the administration's ongoing fight with anthropic. Yeah. That's a whole podcast. That is a wholen podcast. But you know, I do think that we should be clear that although AI is spending a lot of money in these elections to have influence, it's not like they don't already have a seat at the table