Photo is of Copenhagen’s harbor bus, which is part of the public transportation system. I love it but it’s full of pensioners with small children because most people (my son!) won’t wake up a half hour early to get to work extremely slowly on an electric boat when he could take the Metro or his bike and be at work in 5 minutes. Me and my grandaughter, however, enjoy a majestic, silent cruise nearly daily (electric boats are so quiet) but I see that it isn’t the most practical way to get…anywhere.
The Copenhagen public transport system, including my lovely boats, is privatized. Privatization works in Denmark (the least corrupt country on the world) because Denmark actually regulates their contractors and demands they deliver for the public. The idea is it’s a privilege to get a public contract and you have to earn it, every day, or they fire the contractor and get a better one. We could have that in the US too.
Instead we get shit like this:
The AI lobby that wants no regulation pours money into defeating candidate who wants some regulation, ends up with candidate who wants robust regulation:
The tech billionaires who spent more than $8 million to sink a Democratic House candidate in New York wanted to fire a warning at other would-be lawmakers who support tougher rules on artificial intelligence.
But Tuesday’s loss by tech critic Alex Bores left the AI advocates with little to say the next day — and little appetite for other titanic matchups this year, a person familiar with the leading anti-Bores group told POLITICO.
Meanwhile, supporters of stricter AI regulations saw the outcome as just the latest sign of public opinion shifting in their direction.
Not only did Bores score a close second in the five-person race to replace outgoing Manhattan Rep. Jerry Nadler, but the contest drew tons of attention — and Silicon Valley money on both sides — to the debate about AI’s impact on jobs, electricity costs and public safety. And Tuesday’s winner, Assemblymember Micah Lasher, is a fellow tech industry critic who favors AI regulations and a data center moratorium.
Most of all, regulation supporters say the backlash against the gusher of pro-AI spending should embolden other candidates to take on the industry. They called that a strategic loss for Leading the Future, the pro-AI super PAC that had spearheaded the push for Bores’ defeat.
“[Leading the Future] went into this race as a genuinely frightening force that seemed potentially positioned to fundamentally reshape the incentives of politicians in Congress and their willingness to touch AI,” said Nathan Calvin, general counsel and vice president of state affairs at the pro-regulation group Encode AI. “And they left the race not a particularly imposing force that politicians don’t seem particularly afraid of.”
Bores, a former data scientist at Palantir, had his own base of support in Silicon Valley, including pro-regulation super PACs backed by tech dollars that spent $18 million on his behalf. Tuesday’s primary was seen nationally as part of a bitter power struggle within the tech industry on how aggressively the government should police AI safety, a fight typified by the feud between industry giants OpenAI and Anthropic.
Both sides may end up disappointed, Lasher said in his victory speech: “I won’t be taking my cues from either of you when it comes to protecting our kids, our jobs and our families.”
When Leading the Future leaders Josh Vlasto and Zac Moffatt announced their campaign to take down Bores in November, they promised to “aggressively oppose policymakers and candidates in states across the country who play political games with the future of American leadership.” Bores, a member of the New York Assembly, had drawn the group’s ire for his authorship of the RAISE Act, the state’s landmark AI safety law.
Leading the Future did not endorse any of the candidates running to succeed Nadler. But it was adamant that Bores should lose.
The pro-AI group was following on the heels of the cryptocurrency industry’s success in targeting critics and bolstering allies during the 2024 election — a fight that has left crypto with unaccustomed clout in Washington during Donald Trump’s second presidency. Leading the Future’s Vlasto is also a top adviser at Fairshake, a pro-cryptocurrency group that spent more than $40 million to help defeat then-Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) two years ago.
But this year’s House election in New York has turned out differently.
For one thing, the Democratic primary quickly became part of a bitter conflict within the AI industry — particularly between OpenAI and Anthropic. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and other executives split off from OpenAI in 2021 due to concerns that it was developing advanced AI in a reckless manner, and the two sides have sparred ever since about the need for new safety regulations.
Each side was flush with cash: Leading the Future had at least $75 million from OpenAI President Greg Brockman, venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz and others. It ultimately spent $8 million against Bores.
It faced off against an Anthropic-linked super PAC network spearheaded by Public First Action, an organization led by former Democratic Rep. Brad Carson of Oklahoma and former Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah. A super PAC affiliated with Public First called Jobs and Democracy funneled $12 million to Bores, roughly two-thirds of the total spending made on his behalf.
OpenAI and Anthropic both declined to comment on Tuesday’s election. But OpenAI has begun supporting more aggressive AI safety measures in the states, as well as mandatory federal reviews of cutting-edge AI models.
Adam Kovacevich, founder and CEO of the tech industry group Chamber of Progress, said Leading the Future’s aggressive efforts to defeat Bores were unusual for the super PAC network, which has predominantly moved to boost pro-AI candidates. Those candidates include a number of Republicans, whose voters in recent polls have been less skeptical of the technology compared with Democrats.
Unfortunately, what we end up with is… the AI industry writing their own regulations so the public still lost in this battle of billionaires. This is a time-honored approach to managing regulation. An industry will see the way the wind is blowing and “offer” fake regulation in an effort to head off real regulation with teeth and consequences.
The US will not fix our corruption problem unless we re-regulate campaign finance. This country cannot continue to take orders from lobbyists, whether those lobbyists are lobbying for the far Right government in Israel or AI or crypto or Roundup or Medicare Advantage. It’s corruption and it’s destroying quality of life in the US.
