The Other Sam in the Valley

Broadly speaking, these centibillionaires have spent the past year hammering a nationalistic argument for the unfettered acceleration of artificial intelligence: The race for A.I. dominance is going to dictate geopolitical hegemony in the 21st century. Therefore, U.S. corporations from Nvidia to Amazon to OpenAI needed the fulsome support of the federal government or else we’ll all face a world in which—and I’m exaggerating for emphasis here, but only slightly—our grandkids will be looking up the Mandarin word for “democracy.”

Is this really true? It’s almost religious dogma in some quarters, but most citizens have been unpersuaded that this debate involves world-historical stakes. Polls consistently show that most Americans harbor fears about A.I., or at least the specter of what it entails: white-collar job losses, a lawless economy in which large corporations are incentivized to replace humans with robots, where algorithms replace creativity, and their kids are talking to bots instead of making friends. It seemed like an opportunity beckoned to fashion this widespread distaste into a winning political cudgel.

Rep. Sam Liccardo, a freshman House Democrat representing some of the wealthiest zip codes in Silicon Valley, is pushing his party toward a middle passage. “We need, as Democrats, to acknowledge that the industry is not wrong about the fact that whoever wins the battle to dominate this technology will write the rules for the next century,” Liccardo told me. But he also recognizes that the argument isn’t as simplistic as the industry insists. So he’s been hosting periodic breakfast meetings at the Library of Congress with Silicon Valley leaders in an attempt to close the information gap between lawmakers and industry. Recently, freshman members sat with Nvidia C.E.O. Jensen Huang, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei. “If we’re going to make meaningful progress on A.I. regulation,” Liccardo said, “it’s going to take a coalition of the willing on both sides of the aisle.”

There’s nothing Capitol Hill loves more than committees and commissions to endlessly study issues and offer recommendations. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffrieshas created an A.I. task force and recently met with TechNet, a coalition of tech C.E.O.s. At the same time, it’s hard to envision Congress actually creating thoughtful legislation safeguarding A.I. when its own tech aptitude is so derisible. Instead, Liccardo is hoping to create a nimble new entity within a federal agency—composed of academics, industry reps, public safety advocates, and the like—to set baseline standards around privacy or age verification, for instance. When a tech company meets those national standards, they’d be able to opt out of the emerging patchwork of state regulations that A.I. executives warn will hamper their growth. “I’m trying to find a more productive pathway for approaching regulation that does not have Congress involved in determining the details of model weights and algorithms, because I think most members of Congress would concede we’re not particularly adept at that,” he said, adding, “We know this technology is moving very quickly. But they would set a preemption standard that would enable companies to demonstrate that they are safe enough to avoid having to deploy an army of lobbyists and lawyers in 50 state capitals.”

The Middle Way

All these debates are unfolding at a time when general A.I. comprehension remains uniformly unsophisticated and imprecise—calling to mind that old, made-for-SNL segment from the Today show in which the early internet was described as a “nationwide computer billboard.” Many people still associate the tech with early chatbots without fully grasping the tsunami around the corner. (I’m not here to provide that dissertation today. But make sure to sign up for my partner Ian Krietzberg’s excellent Puck email on the topic, The Hidden Layer, for a sense of where we’re headed.) Anyway, this intellectual chasm has left the door open for both parties to race to define the issue.

On Friday, the White House released its long-awaited legislative framework for A.I.—a much more comprehensive document than previous efforts, which amounted to little more than tuck-in language preventing state regulation. This new iteration still tries to ensure A.I. standards are set at a national level, while also making a bid for congressional support by proposing protections for children, consumer safeguards against rising electric bills, education and job training, etcetera. It also suggests “protecting individuals from the unauthorized distribution” of A.I.-generated replicas of themselves—i.e., deepfakes—but urges carveouts for satire and other uses that would presumably protect the president’s own deepfake-heavy social media activity.

Clearly, the White House also saw the polling on the public’s concerns about A.I. taking their jobs, spiking their utility bills, and manipulating their kids. But it’s also an acknowledgement that even a Republican trifecta is disinclined to give a free pass to an industry that’s transforming the economy and society. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican stickler for A.I. protections, especially for children, worked closely with the White House and released complementary legislation this week.

None of it is likely to pass Congress—at least not anytime soon. Even a party mostly held hostage by the president isn’t sufficiently unified on the issue, let alone able to enlist the bipartisan support they’d need to meet a 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Plus, Congress is exceptionally bad at legislating on technological advances (see also: social media guardrails, net neutrality). It took the startling emergence of ChatGPT three years ago for lawmakers to even conceive of A.I. as something they’d need to grapple with. Yet the legislative branch has remained mostly paralyzed while Trump has moved to tear down the few roadblocks that exist for A.I. companies. (Though he’s also happy to mete out punishment to those, like Anthropic, that get crosswise with his administration.)

Some Democrats see an opportunity. Gina Raimondo, who was Commerce Secretary under Biden, has been pushing a “grand bargain” in which employers create pathways for jobs in an A.I. economy, and the government is responsible for training and safety nets. “Companies are about to spend almost $1 trillion laying the infrastructure for an A.I. economy, which is exciting because that allows us to lead, but we also ought to be thinking just as boldly about what infrastructure is required in the age of A.I. to make sure all Americans are brought along,” she told me. “So many of our institutions and policies were just created for a different time and need to be modernized.” This echoes brand-new polling from Blue Rose Research that finds a majority of voters—57 percent of Harris voters, 53 percent of swing voters, and 51 percent of Trump voters—want the government and tech companies to ensure, and even pay for, good-paying jobs as A.I. advances. (Voters, at least according to this poll, don’t want direct income support.)

The tech industry, for its part, is prepared to spend tens of millions of dollars on midterm campaigns to ensure friendly faces on the Hill, and conversely, to defeat those it deems obstacles to its agenda. Liccardo sees this as a huge problem—lawmakers are scared to cross an industry that could destroy their careers. “We’ve got one party that is entirely captive to the whims of any industry—cryptocurrency, tech, or any other that is willing to invest tens or hundreds of millions of dollars into super PACs,” he said. “Democrats have the responsibility to be the adults in the room, to engage meaningfully in the industry.”

Like many Democratic policies, the middle path will likely put a populist wrapper on a technocratic approach. Most Americans remain deeply skeptical of A.I., and while they think it should be regulated, they don’t trust either party to do it effectively. (Though, despite lacking a coherent message on the issue, Democrats are on equal or better footing than the G.O.P.) “The more sober minds involved in advocating for the hyperscalers understand how deeply unpopular it is to simply steamroll public opinion and gaslight the public about their fears,” Liccardo said.

Rep. Jake Auchincloss, a Massachusetts Democrat, also believes that the party can seize the issue if they get their shit together—especially with younger voters, who are simultaneously more open to, and more worried about, A.I. “What we have to do is match the optimism and anxiety that is in the youth vote with policies that reflect that it would be a mistake for us to be A.I. catastrophists,” Auchincloss told me in a recent interview. “Oh, there’s going to be 100 percent unemployment in five years. You’re all going to work for a robot. All you can hope for is that the government will give you a check. That kind of catastrophizing is not electorally appealing. It’s also not accurate.”