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The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections
- ausbah 4mo agohow long before “AI agents have voting rights too” becomes real
- Joker_vD 4mo ago"AI right are human rights!"
- bulbar 4mo agoNo need for that. People will ask their favorite AI who to vote for anyway.
- ortusdux 4mo agoI fully expect to see Grok proactively offer to help you with your ballot
- firtoz 4mo agoI got mine to build me an interactive quiz for the UK elections, unsure if that's better or worse... It felt not so biased but who knows right?
- mullingitover 4mo agoThis will actually dovetail perfectly with candidates using AI to write up their policy stances and work it into dynamic, emotionally appealing stump speeches.
- gruez 4mo agoNever? Even the whole "corporations are people too" meme where this sentiment presumably originated from is often misunderstood. It doesn't mean corporations have the same rights as people, it just means they can conduct transactions and can sue/be used. It doesn't mean they can vote.
- wat10000 4mo agoIt does in one town in Delaware, at least: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/delaware-court-upholds-voting-by-companies-small-towns-election-2026-05-26/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/delaware-court-upho...
- weaksauce 4mo agoThe thing that stuck with me is the awful reasoning by the judge: "Judge rules Fenwick Island's corporate voting does not dilute human votes" How could corporations voting not dilute the human votes by the very nature and reason of voting in the first place?
- cucumber3732842 4mo ago>How could corporations voting not dilute the human votes by the very nature and reason of voting in the first place? Because you're being misled (i.e. lied to) about the actual nature of the situation. This is a snooty vacation town shithole. Non-resident landowners have been allowed to vote here since day 1. The purpose of incorporating as a town is/was essentially to have a town that's run by business. Think like City of Industry CA fucked the Hamptons, this is the kid. Back when they did this in 1950-whatever this worked fine. All the land was owned by McScumbag A, McScumbag B and McScumbag C who invariably lived in DC, NYC, etc, etc. Back then people owned vacation cottages, businesses, motels, etc, etc, in their own name. So, as everything moved to LLCs and whatnot over the years the scummy developers and investors slowly lost influence to the "filthy townies" or whatever and so in 2000-whatever they amended their constitution to allow their LLCs to vote and now, here we are litigating the implications in court. Yeah, it's stupid on like a dozen different levels but this isn't the "random normal-ish town goes apeshit and decide to let DuPont vote" it's being cast as. This town was already apeshit, it's just being fought about in court. And INB4 anyone puts words in my mouth, no I don't support the ruling.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- rectang 4mo agoMaking it hard for politically inconvenient humans to vote is more straightforward than granting AI agents the right to vote.
- guywithahat 4mo agoI mean many of these companies are doing tens of billions in revenue each, meanwhile their home state is becoming increasingly hostile to their presence. That said this article shares no numbers so I have no idea what the scope or scale of their impact is.
- ChrisArchitect 4mo agoTech Influence Watch site: https://influence.citationneeded.news/ https://influence.citationneeded.news/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632474) (Blog post: https://www.citationneeded.news/tech-influence-watch/ https://www.citationneeded.news/tech-influence-watch/)
- utopiah 4mo agoVery nice "Contributions by entity" visualization, thanks
- thatmf 4mo agoYeah, this is amazing and should be submitted here on its own if it hasn't already. I just found that one of my reps got an absurd amount of money from some shadowy group called "Think Big". Which is in turn part of a larger org called "Leading the Future" [0], which is: > A coordinated network of AI-industry super PACs working to head off stricter AI regulation, chiefly by pushing a single federal framework that would override stronger state-level rules on issues like consumer protection and liability. Leading the Future is the lead committee, channeling money to the Democratic-facing Think Big and the Republican-facing American Mission. All draw on the same core backers — chiefly Andreessen Horowitz, and OpenAI president Greg Brockman and his wife. [0]: https://influence.citationneeded.news/2026/networks/leading-the-future https://influence.citationneeded.news/2026/networks/leading-...
- testing22321 4mo agoWhat major industry in the US hasn’t been doing that for decades? At this point it’s a perfectly common cost of doing business there. Pay money to get favourable laws passed. But it’s not bribery. No no no.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- jlarocco 4mo ago"Voting with your Wallet" - the American way.
- ToucanLoucan 4mo agoThe rich love the concept of voting with your wallet, because by definition they get shitloads more votes than you.
- WalterBright 4mo agoBallot harvesting should be made illegal.
- nonethewiser 4mo agoYup
- akramachamarei 4mo agoHow you define it, exactly?
- nonethewiser 4mo agoWell its not voting that they buy. Its more like representation.
- nonethewiser 4mo agoThe problem is you can’t really limit money without limiting speech. Perhaps it’s still in the public interest to do so, but the constitution doesn’t allow it.
- testing22321 4mo agoThere is only one country where money is considered speech. It is very abnormal, and is legal bribery.
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- rizsyed1 4mo agoThis is interesting. I wonder how this might affect laws and regulations.
- AvAn12 4mo agoIf businesspeople want to get involved in politics, they should have the courage to run for office like anybody else. Lurking on the sidelines and waiving money around is really lame and laughable.
- somenameforme 4mo agoThere are people who couldn't care less about political power, but want certain laws passed, and have lots of money. And then there those who couldn't care less about much of anything besides gaining political power and see money and quid quo pro as means to achieve that.
- WalterBright 4mo agoIf your business is large enough, if you don't donate to politicians, they will target your business. The government is massive and inserts itself into business operations all the time. The inevitable results happen.
- AvAn12 4mo agoThere ARE regulations for sure. But they exist to protect the population at large. For example, food safety laws were not created out of government hostility but rather because food was unsafe. Read (or read about) The Jungle by Upton Sinclair if you want to get creeped out about the food industry in the 1930s before regulations
- doodlebugging 4mo agoProbably a sign that it is past time to tightly regulate all AI-aligned companies and their products to set up guard rails to prevent this level of corruption. I am a person who lives in a state where it is totally legal for lobbyists to walk the floor of the state legislature handing out envelopes of cash to any representative who will line up behind their proposed legislation. Bribery buys state laws here and it buys pretty much anything else that those with deep pockets desire. One day people in this state will wake up and burn it all down by electing representatives who serve the people, not the corporate entities that desire a low drag place to do business. There are active anti-AI and data center groups now in the state. Once they get enough traction this bullshit will end. Anyone at any of these AI companies that attempts to influence elections should be held accountable and should suffer the harshest consequences including confiscation of all personal assets. Multi-generational enforced poverty should be their reward. Just my two cents.
- voidfunc 4mo agoHahaha... regulation lol. That aint happening in the US. If you do see regulation it will be so crippled as to be meaningless but it'll give something politicians can talk about as "for the people". All regulations are written by industry insiders.
- dragontamer 4mo agoRegulation is not possible with today's politics. But it can become possible as soon as January 2027 politics, which is largely determined by the 2026 November election.
- voidfunc 4mo agoNothing of substance will change in 2026. That goose is cooked already after all the gerry mandering
- dragontamer 4mo agoGerrymandering only affects House and the House is overwhelmingly looking like a Democrat victory. Senate is statewide so it's innately immune to Gerrymandering. Like.... Do you even know what that word means?
- savanaly 4mo agoMillions? Makes me think of https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in-almonds/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in...
- ambicapter 4mo agoComparing almonds to elections might be my new favorite way of saying "comparing apples to oranges".
- nonethewiser 4mo agoBut the comparison is of money spent
- ambicapter 4mo agomoney spent ON X. Where X is almonds or elections.
- savanaly 4mo agoYes but the point of the phrase "apples to oranges" is that they are hard to compare. But if you comparing something they both have and is easily measurable, such as sugar, then yes you should compare apples to oranges!
- m3047 4mo agoA decade or so ago I participated in a (data-centric) hackathon having to do with water shortages in California. The acknowledged problem was data, or lack thereof. Most of the groups whistled past the graveyard and presented woulda-coulda "if we had the data / we can get the data by" proposals / findings. We kept looking for the pony for most of the day. We found some pony exhaust, but we didn't find the pony. The rest of the group presented a plan for future research. I chose to give the minority report: based on the information we were able to obtain, California could solve its water shortage if every household ate 16 less almonds a day; an almond taking roughly one gallon of water to produce. A couple years later the almond industry ran some ads that the "gallon of water" meme was somehow wrong, because other useful products were produced from almond trees besides almonds... so they said. Of course, it could have been a coincidence. One of my team members (from Montana) shared a quote from Samuel Clemens: "whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over". That hasn't changed with data centers.
- tiahura 4mo agoSo about the same amount as the spend on a single row in a datacenter?
- pydry 4mo agoSo they want a bailout when the inevitable happens.
- mindcrash 4mo agoFirst it was Search (mostly Google), then Social (mostly Facebook) now AI turning the global internet into their own unregulated playground due to pay to play on US soil. All of which together will make algorithmic bias, data harvesting, and hyper-realistic misinformation flourish. I really wonder when US citizens had enough. Third time is the proverbial charm?
- otikik 4mo agoIf it's for sale, someone will buy
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- hackingonempty 4mo agoWe aren't even getting a kiss.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4mo agoThe almond industry is profitable But what about the "AI industry"