The age of the AI super PAC is here, and it has ballot boxes across the U.S. in its sites ahead of the midterms. If there's a winning election formula the AI industry is looking to repeat, it is the crypto industry's highly effective lobbying muscle in 2024.
The crypto-friendly super PAC Fairshake was the single largest corporate donor in the 2024 election cycle and supported over 50 candidates that were elected to public office. It has amassed another war chest for the 2026 elections. The Leading the Future super PAC formed last summer has financial backing from some of the Silicon Valley donors prominent in Fairshake, which was co-founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, also co-founders of the venture capital firm a16z, as well as OpenAI founder Greg Brockman, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and AI startup Perplexity. Meta also launched a super PAC late last year focused on AI regulation.
Crypto continues to attract broader interest from a wider cross-section of Americans, but AI is seen as an issue that may rise to a much higher level among the public, especially in light of concerns about job losses. Senator Mark Warner, D-Va., recently told CNBC, "I am making a major bet as someone trying to get rehired now as a senator this will be an issue in 2026, and even much more so in 2028, the issue of our time."
While the stock market continues to boom based on AI optimism, public polling about AI is typified by concern.
"Many are worried about AI and fear it will take jobs, invade privacy, and be biased in how it makes decisions," said Darrell Wes, senior fellow at Brookings Institution.
Corporate leaders and investors are far more optimistic about the potential benefits of AI than the general public, according to a recent report from Just Capital. But some are speaking in terms similar to Sen. Warner. At Davos last week, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said, "You can hope for the world you want, but you're going to get the world you got and your competitors are going to use it, countries are going to use it. ... I do think it may go too fast for society."
"So you go back, trade adjustment assistance was supposed to do that. If a town loses a factory and they lose jobs, you have income assistance, relocation, early retirement, retraining. We may have to do that. And I think we're doing it already ourselves," Dimon said.
Later in the interview with The Economist's editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, Dimon said, "We're not going to kill all of our employees tomorrow because we're just not like that." But he did say that looking out five years into the future, "my guess is it'll be fewer employees."
Recent polling from Pew Research showed Americans to be much more concerned than excited about AI's impact on their daily lives. Gallup data shows a similar tilt with more Americans viewing AI as a threat rather than opportunity. The situation sets up a tension between the public interest and the plans of the AI super PACs in the 2026 elections.
According to LTF, the super PAC "is focused on advancing a positive, forward-looking agenda for AI innovation in Washington, D.C. and across the states, proactively engaging in the political process by identifying, maintaining, and growing pro-AI candidates in order to support an AI innovation policy agenda at the state and federal level."
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