By Roman Aglaganov
OpenAI’s president, Greg Brockman, has joined calls for AI safety rules in the US. At the same time, Leading the Future, a network of super PACs he and his wife helped fund with $25 million, is spending to sway at least 48 House and Senate races in favour of candidates who oppose strict rules, Reuters reported on 21 October. OpenAI says the gift was personal, and Brockman told staff in June he had no plans to give more. His spokesperson declined to comment to Reuters.
Words and money
On 29 September Brockman was one of six tech leaders who signed a voluntary AI safety accord with President Trump, pledging to monitor their models and let independent auditors check their safeguards. The group he funded says it wants a “strong, responsible national regulatory AI framework”. Its linked nonprofit runs ads urging Congress to pass one national AI law instead of letting each state set its own rules.
A single national law sounds reasonable. But when there is no such law yet, overriding the states means fewer rules today, not better ones tomorrow. Charlie Blaettler, who runs a group set up to counter Leading the Future, told Reuters that industry leaders pay only lip service to regulation while funding a PAC that fights candidates who back it.
Not only one company
This is not a story about one company. Anthropic has given at least $40 million to Public First Action, which takes the opposite side and opposes a federal law overriding the states. Andreessen Horowitz and its founders gave $50 million to Leading the Future. AI companies and their leaders are now among the biggest voices in American elections, on both sides of the question of how AI should be governed.
What voters should ask
Companies are entitled to political views. But when a company’s leaders say one thing in public and fund another at the ballot box, the funding is the better guide to what they want. The simplest fix is transparency: every AI lab should publish, in one place, what it and its leaders give to political groups and what those groups campaign for. Then voters can judge the message against the money.
Disclosure: AI Pulse is written with AI tools, including Claude, which is made by Anthropic.
