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Silicon Valley is pouring millions into pro-AI PACs to sway midterms
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- mkw5053 1y agoNotable that 'Leading the Future' explicitly models itself on Fairshake, which spent $130 million in 2024 and achieved 48 of 51 endorsed candidates winning. At that success rate, $100 million in AI PAC spending could determine 30-40 House seats' positions on AI regulation. For context, the EU's AI Act passed with zero industry PAC spending, while China's AI regulations proceeded without Western-style lobbying.
- germinalphrase 1y ago“ Fairshake supports candidates committed to securing the United States as the home to innovators building the next generation of the internet. Providing blockchain innovators the ability to develop their networks under a clearer regulatory and legal framework is vital if the broader open blockchain economy is to grow to its full potential here in the United States. Fairshake is a federal independent expenditure-only committee registered with the Federal Election Commission and supports candidates solely through its independent activities.” https://www.fairshakepac.com/ https://www.fairshakepac.com/
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- guywithahat 1y agoFrom what I've seen, spending has almost no effect on competitive elections. Groups like Fairshake are more about punishing candidates who take opposition positions. I haven't looked at the fairshake data in-depth but I'd guess they just invested in candidates likely to win who aren't vocally opposed to their position.
- justin66 1y ago> From what I've seen, spending has almost no effect on competitive elections. Groups like Fairshake are more about punishing candidates who take opposition positions. Which... does not influence elections?
- digital_sawzall 1y ago[flagged]
- SrslyJosh 1y ago[flagged]
- mkw5053 1y agoIt's my understanding that one of the most methodologically rigorous papers is Gilens and Page (2014) [0], which analyzed 1,779 policies over 20 years and found that when rich and average Americans disagree, the rich win 90% of the time, regardless of how many regular citizens support or oppose the policy. [0] https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_th...
- tzs 1y ago> From what I've seen, spending has almost no effect on competitive elections. Groups like Fairshake are more about punishing candidates who take opposition positions. A large number of elections for the House of Representatives aren't competitive. The candidate from the incumbent party is going to win no matter how bad they are and no matter how good the other candidates are. No amount of money spent on that election will change things. However, in a large number of those districts only a small fraction of the voters from that party vote in the primaries or attend the caucuses where that party chooses its candidate. There usually isn't a lot of spending on this. A well funded primary challenger has a very good chance of knocking the incumbent out in the primary or at the caucus. The threat of this is how Trump keeps the Republicans in the House almost completely under his control. Look at all those Republicans in the House who voted for the "Big Beautiful Bill" and then went home to get completely excoriated by their constituents at town halls for not holding out to get the parts of the bill that were terrible for those constituents removed. They knew that would be the reaction. But Trump told them that if they didn't vote for it or delayed it to make more changes he'd fund a primary challenger.
- kubb 1y agoWow, seats are cheap! We should totally let the people with the most money buy them, that will bring us stability.
- bee_rider 1y agoI wonder if we could design a system where everybody in the populace chips in a little bit, and the people buy some representatives of our own.
- noman-land 1y agoI have been thinking the same. Use their own tools against them.
- Yeul 1y agoDepressingly this is exactly how it went in the 19th century only instead of railway barons we now have tech barons.
- dkiebd 1y agoWho is going to spend a dime in lobbying for or against the EU’s AI Act? The absolutely irrelevant Mistral, which is starved for money and would rather stay on the good side of the European commissioners and oligarchs?
- itsdrewmiller 1y ago“At that rate” - your math only makes sense if their spending is the entire reason those campaigns won. I haven’t dug into the numbers, but if those are house and senate campaigns then it’s a small fraction of total spending.
- bhouston 1y agoThe degree to which US politics can be bought amazes me as a Canadian. It does seem that $$$ makes right in the US. It isn’t so much the will of the people but the will of the rich and powerful. For example, in the last US election there was billions spent in 2024 by the political parties, and outside groups: Parties themselves: https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race Outside groups: https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/by_group https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/by_group
- guywithahat 1y agoIt doesn't, money has surprisingly little effect on competitive elections
- iancmceachern 1y agoDo you have a source?
- MangoCoffee 1y agojust google kamala harris campaign fundraising vs trump. 2024 election just happened not too long ago. she got more money than trump and yet lose. money is not the only factor.
- Chinjut 1y agoThe election where the billionaire prominently campaigned for by the richest megabillionaire in the world won proves that money plays little role in politics.
- thejazzman 1y agoelon poured a ton of money into strategic locations right at the end, such as running a fake lottery in PA. many attribute the outcome on the role he played. may not be the most money, but it's the most effective use of money. PA roads were littered with trump signs because of people being paid to litter our streets with them. for months. people are, sadly, very easily influenced. companies wouldn't pour so much into advertising, in general, if it didn't have such an effective influence
- pera 1y agoThere's simply too much money involved, investors and corporations will do literally everything they can to keep this going...
- throwawaybob420 1y ago[flagged]
- stale2002 1y agoNobody is asking for special privileges. Instead, this is mostly to stop gatekeeper old school businesses from weaponizing the law against much better competitors that are powered via AI. It is to simply make sure everyone is allowed to compete to provide a better/cheaper product.
- dang 1y agoOk, but please don't fulminate on HN. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You may not owe whoever you're talking about any better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
- throwawaybob420 1y agoWhat? lol what part of what I said is wrong dude. It’s the reality
- dang 1y agoCommenters need to follow the rules here regardless of their views of reality.
- throwawaybob420 1y agoOk bud I’ll sanitize all my hackernews comments to ensure that it fits into the mindset of an automaton.
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- icandoit 1y agoAI would never be able to hijack the political process. AI Super-PACs dominating elections would be a clear milestone in the progression of the "gradual disempowerment" theory of loss of human control. How could a person dedicated to their denial of the possibility of gradual disempowerment spin this as "good actually?" Am I reduced to "technological improvement is always good"? Or there some logically smaller step I can take?
- itsdrewmiller 1y agoThese are pro-AI PACs, not PACs run by AI.
- chronotis 1y agoFormer (failed) candidate here, state legislative race in a smaller state that's not generally described as competitive. Money = time. When large donors can deploy large amounts of cash, it relieves you of the need to spend tons of time raising money and you can instead spend that time on other things of greater ROI or that can scale your outreach to a larger audience.
- arduanika 1y agoI guess that means that now, AI is helping these politicians save time and increase their productivity!
- chronotis 1y agoThere are some efforts to do exactly that, though overall I'd observe that the general level of technological sophistication / early adopter-ism is pretty low in the politician cohort. There are tools for developing campaign plans, direct mail messaging, text campaign content, etc.; we used AI social media ad generation tools to help fill our content pipeline. We developed some internal tools to assist with direct mail fundraising letters to PACs / labor unions / etc.
- arduanika 1y agoNot exactly what I was joking about, but interesting nonetheless. I suppose some amount of adoption by politicians and staffers is good, so that they can see what this new thing is, and crucially, what it is not. But of course it comes at the cost of making a new class of errors. Hopefully these will be contained enough to mainly just serve as a learning experience for them.
- xyst 1y agoThat is awful. Corporate money, billionaires need to stay out of politics. Yet another reason why Citizens United v FEC was an absolute mistake.
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- anthem2025 1y ago[flagged]
- testing22321 1y agoThis was a very predictable outcome once money was classified as speech. Rich people have way more of it.
- xyst 1y agoSilicon Valley is just like the oil and gas industry. This is quite awful. We need to reverse Citizens United v FEC decision.
- dante9999 1y agoUS politics is broken, but most AI regulations are poorly designed. Look at EU AI policy. It is not addressing any real problems and is mostly just additional paperwork.