‘A deep unease with AI right now’: While voters worry, Congress is spinning its wheels on tech regulation
As companies develop artificial intelligence at breakneck speed, pouring in vast amounts of money to achieve tech supremacy, there’s a parallel race underway — the race to stake out political positions and appeal to voters concerned about AI’s impact.
A stream of increasingly alarming headlines has vaulted the promise and pitfalls of AI into the center of the national conversation. Now politicians — who have varying levels of tech understanding — are scrambling to articulate policies on everything from the pace of AI progress to the proliferation of data centers drawing opposition around the country.
The fast-moving technology represents a rare thing in American politics: a policy arena where the entrenched political parties don’t yet have calcified positions and voters are engaged and perhaps persuadable on the issues, which are nuanced. As politicians take the pulse of their constituents and begin to take their stands, the typical party lines are not as clear-cut as usual.
There’s also a lack of consensus on AI, meaning the possibility for federal action this year is slim to none.
Congress has a variety of proposals under discussion — including a bill that would create safety requirements for AI development coauthored by Westford Representative Lori Trahan — but none have real momentum, and Congress has vanishingly few days of legislative work scheduled before November. The Trump administration has made clear it does not intend to take unilateral action on the issue.
Instead, politicians are channeling what they feel is voter frustration and concern as they look ahead to the midterm elections and beyond.
“I speak about it to people in my state all the time,” said Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a swing state Democrat and rumored 2028 presidential hopeful who has proposed some AI legislation. “I would just say in general, US citizens don’t like [AI], and the industry hasn’t done enough [of a] job to convince people why this is a good thing.”
Some of the politicians taking early positions on AI have been the epitome of odd bedfellows, illustrated by an AI-skeptic event in Washington on Tuesday called the “Pro-Human Assembly.”
There, progressive Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and MAGA firebrand Steve Bannon were featured speakers in the politically diverse agenda.
Bannon, a right-wing personality who seizes on populist political themes, described an opportunity to tap into voters’ psyches with a stand against AI corporations.
“American citizens are not going to be supplicants to the oligarchs any more. . . . The people don’t trust them,” Bannon said at Tuesday’s conference. He dismissed the AI CEOs asking for regulation, calling it a crisis PR strategy. “This is a hinge in history. We have to handle it correctly.”
Sanders echoed the same themes from the left, saying that AI is too powerful and dangerous for large technology companies to go unchecked.
“Despite living in a so-called democracy, the public has had virtually no input into the AI revolution that is transforming the world in which we live,” Sanders said.
Recent legislation has also made for unusual pairings. One proposed bill that AI experts have touted comes from staunch Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.
Politicians of all stripes were already taking sides on data centers that have increasingly emerged as a key concern for voters. Data centers’ spread across the country have caused a fierce backlash, becoming a tangible way to channel people’s feelings on AI.
President Trump has taken a pro-AI approach, embracing data centers and eschewing regulation as billions of dollars worth of investment prop up the economy and stock market. Though his administration has at times waffled on how light a touch to employ, Trump on Monday declared that he supports AI development with few restrictions and dismissed fears of AI’s dangers as a “hoax.”
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT,” Trump wrote on his social media site. “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China.”
But voters are not so confident. Public opinion polling shows Americans increasingly skeptical of not just AI, but the corporate and political leaders who have the power to shape its development. Pew Research, a nonpartisan organization that studies public sentiment, has found that voters are growing more pessimistic about the potential impact of AI on society, even as they adopt it in their daily lives.
“People largely think AI is moving at too fast a clip, and they don’t have much faith in how either companies or the government are approaching this technology,” said Pew senior researcher Colleen McClain. “Overall, we see that views of AI are pretty negative, and they have become more so over time.”
Similar findings appeared in a recent New York Times/Siena poll of voters, especially for Democrats and independents. That poll also showed a possible persuadable middle on the issue, with 42 percent saying they trusted Republicans on AI more, 40 percent choosing Democrats, and 18 percent unsure.
Democrats see an opportunity. A group of prominent strategists recently held a meeting to lay out a vision for AI, according to Politico. Former President Barack Obama urged party leadership at a private fund-raiser to make AI oversight a centerpiece of their agenda, according to the Times.
“It’s very fluid,” said Newton Representative Jake Auchincloss, who was the first lawmaker to deliver a floor speech written by AI to call attention to the technology three years ago. “Americans are making up their mind on it in real time. . . . We have an opportunity as a party to marry ourselves to issues that . . . [reflect] both the potential upside and the risk..”
As they develop their positions on AI, both parties are showing some signs of retreating to their usual political corners. Some Democrats are pushing for tough government regulation and warning of the climate impact of data centers, while some Republicans want a free-market approach and worry about the US losing the technological race to China.
“They can self-police. They can self-regulate,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, told reporters Tuesday about leading AI companies. “They don’t need the government to tell them to slow it down.”
But there are lawmakers straddling the line and acknowledging that any AI legislation will need broad support to become law.
“There is a deep unease with AI right now” among voters, said Senator Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat and cochair of the chamber’s Artificial Intelligence Caucus. “If we’re going to actually pass something, it also has to be bipartisan.”
Heinrich said that voters’ concerns about AI are a through-line across other major issues, such as the high cost of energy and the clout of large tech companies.
Blumenthal said he sees an opportunity to work with Republicans who may otherwise be opposed to a strong government hand in corporate affairs.
“We avoided calling it ‘regulation,’ that’s a four-letter word,” Blumenthal said of his framework policies with Hawley. “But oversight and scrutiny, yeah, there’s a lot of bipartisan support for it.”
Politicians are also navigating a deluge of money.
Political funding groups are spending millions on campaigns of both AI proponents and skeptics, in some cases reflecting the dueling positions of the competing AI companies. Even before Trahan introduced her bipartisan bill, she faced a barrage of negative ads in her district accusing her of half-measures. An analysis by Issue One, a group that criticizes money in politics, found big tech companies spent more than $40 million lobbying in Washington this year through June alone.
But some strategists warn that the spending could backfire, further turning off voters who already view these corporations with heavy skepticism.
“I think there is a gut feeling in a lot of voters that AI is going to be disruptive,” said Cooper Teboe, a Silicon Valley-based Democrat strategist who advises donors and candidates. “There is not enough money in the world spent in politics or anywhere else to make people believe that something they know is bad for their lives is actually good for their lives.”
By: Tal Kopan and Jim Puzzanghera
Source: The Boston Globe