In a new survey of over 2,000 US adults conducted days ago, Politico found that the vast majority of respondents would pull the plug on the whole AI buildout if they could.
The magazine presented participants with an intriguing hypothetical: if you were working on developing AI and started seeing signs that the tech could destroy humanity, would you keep going?
The answers were telling: only 38 percent said they would continue, while 62 percent said they would stop and would “hope that other labs see the same signs and also decide to stop.”
Of those who self-identified as Republicans, 55 percent agreed they would stop the buildout, while 66 percent of Democrats said the same. Even undecided voters agree, with 58 percent saying they would pull the plug. If the presidential election was an anti-AI candidate versus a pro-AI one, in other words, the latter would be crushed at the polls.
The results cut to the heart of the AI safety narrative being driven by some of the most powerful tech CEOs in the world. The frenzied attempt by AI billionaires to “manufacture a crisis” around AI safety, as the famed investor Steve Eisman put it, seems to be having a knock-on effect of furthering the public’s anxiety around the increasingly unpopular technology.
Yet for as sour as public sentiment has turned, it seems no amount of backlash will sway career politicians in the Democratic or Republican parties.
Separate reporting by Politico revealed a quiet strategy by Democratic Party consultants who are privately begging candidates in battleground states not to criticize AI on the campaign trail. If dems go all-out in demonizing AI and data centers, the logic goes, the massive tech lobby could unleash a virtual Blitzkrieg against Democratic candidates ahead of the November midterms.
The politicians in question include Don Davis in North Carolina, Marcy Kaptur in Ohio, and Henry Cuellar in Texas, each of whom are running in states that have been carved up like hams by AI data center developers, Politico interviews with more than a dozen party insiders revealed.
“You know, these AI groups — they come out and they say that they’re concerned, that they want regulation. But then they spend huge amounts of money on defeating anybody who wants legislative regulation,” Washington representative Pramila Jayapal told Politico.
On the other side of the aisle, Republicans are also freaking out about the backlash. In mid-August, Republican campaign strategists issued a scathing memo warning AI companies to clean up their caustic image ahead of the midterms, as negative public sentiment around data centers caught numerous candidates off guard.
Some top Republicans have denied the AI safety narrative out of hand, like president Donald Trump, who recently blasted tech leaders for calling for a slowdown of AI development.
All told, it appears neither party is likely to support a platform that would restrain or regulate AI companies — Democrats out of fear, and Republicans out of avarice. That makes it difficult to say how heavily AI will weigh in the ballot box come November.
Like matters of military spending or foreign policy, the two-party duopoly leaves US voters no chance at ever having a real say in the AI buildout, which is filling their communities with toxic chemicals, driving their children into mental health crises, and pushing one of the largest financial bubbles ever seen in the modern world.
More on AI: Chinese Government Dismisses Tech Billionaire Calls for an AI Slowdown as “Fear-Mongering”