Watchdog’s Online Tracker Shows Which Candidates Are Being Showered With AI Industry’s Dark Money

The artificial intelligence industry's super political action committees are dumping a heap of dark money into electing candidates from both parties to protect their interests on Capitol Hill amid growing public skepticism and backlash.On Wednesday, the progressive advocacy group Demand Progress unveiled a new tool to help voters keep track of which midterm candidates are on the take.The website, known as AI Money Watch, is using Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings to track spending by the largest AI super PAC, Leading the Future (LTF), which has raised 125 million for into this year's midterms after being created last August to oust critics of the industry and protect allies.AI chatbots have been accused of flirting with children, discouraging people in distress from seeking help, and even offering instructions on how to plan a mass shooting—and billionaire AI CEOs are doling out millions to kill any safeguards that would stop this, said Demand Progress Action's AI policy adviser, Colin McGlynn, in a statement announcing the tracker. With AI Money Watch, Americans can see which candidates the biggest AI Super PAC is buying, who they are trying to stop, and how much they are spending.”The tracker allows users to view all 21 races in which LTF has spent money through its affiliated Democratic and Republican PACs and the 13 candidates it has endorsed. While LTF has said it supports common-sense AI regulations to protect children and improve privacy, its affiliated nonprofit, Build American AI, has voiced opposition to state-level regulations and urged Congress to adopt a White House framework unveiled in March that calls for the federal government to preempt state AI laws.Among LTF's principal backers are top MAGA donors, including OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, as well as Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale and CEO Alex Karp.But its top three beneficiaries are all Democrats. The group has spent more than 982,000 on advertising through its Democratic affiliate Think Big in support of Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), a centrist facing a progressive primary challenger, Michael Blake, in his Bronx district. Torres, whom LTF has endorsed, has been one of the most active legislators in the realm of AI, introducing a regulatory bill last year aimed at unleashing AI innovation that was described by critics as too industry-friendly.LTF also threw over 1.1 million behind former Rep. Melissa Bean, an ex-investment banker, who won the Democratic primary for the open seat in Illinois' 8th congressional district with additional help from cryptocurrency and pro-Israel groups, which gave her the edge over her Justice Democrats-backed opponent Junaid Ahmed.The group poured even more money, 1.4 million, into backing former Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.—the son of the late civil rights icon—as he attempted a comeback after nearly 14 years out of Congress. The Democrat had said he wanted Illinois' economically marginalized 2nd District to be on the ground floor of the AI economic revolution. By far the super PAC's biggest target has been New York State Assemblymember Alex Bores (D-73), whom it has bombarded with 5.7 million worth of negative ads to fight off his run in the state's 12th congressional district.Bores, a former Palantir employee, has run proudly on his role in helping to enact one of the strongest state-level AI regulation frameworks in the country and made himself a target for LTF's benefactors. Think Big has described his legislation as “ideological and politically motivated while Lonsdale has degraded him as a random legislator in New York state seeking to harass and slow us down, and make us lose to China.”LTF has also backed two pro-AI Republicans for US Senate through its GOP PAC American Mission—the hawkish Sen. Lindsey Graham, who fought off an anti-interventionist primary challenger in South Carolina, and Rep. Andy Barr, who is gunning for the Kentucky seat long held by Sen. Mitch McConnell after comfortably winning his primary. In a similar fashion to the cryptocurrency industry's 245 million push to put its allies in Congress and the White House in 2024, the AI industry's titanic effort to influence the midterms comes as its unchecked growth has left voters feeling increasingly uneasy and angry.As Ryan Cooper explained on Wednesday for The American Prospect, any messaging the PAC produces will almost certainly be dishonest.AI as a business is quite unpopular, with 56 negative sentiment and just 38 approval in a recent NBC News poll. The data centers AI requires are even more unpopular, with a recent Heatmap News poll finding that Americans oppose them by a 71-21 margin—a 49-point swing in just one year.When something is this unpopular, its associated PACs tend to carefully avoid mentioning what they actually care about. Instead, they run pretextual ads that raise unrelated pseudo-objections against their enemies. That’s how crypto took down Sen. [Sherrod] Brown (D-Ohio), and it’s how the Israel lobby took down Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Cori Bush (D-Mo.), and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). So, when some ad campaign is talking about housing, jobs, or whatever, and it’s funded by LTF, it will be vitally important to point out what is really going on.McGlynn told Cooper that it's especially important to keep an eye on candidates like Torres, who claim to be in favor of some regulation but are receiving massive support from an industry that wants none.“If you are going to take the money from the people that say, ‘No, don’t regulate anything,’ then you’ve lost credibility,” said McGlynn.