A new advocacy group focused on building a left-right alliance to push for regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) rolled out a six-figure ad campaign Monday\u00a0targeting the Washington area.<\/p>\n
In a nod to the deep partisan divides it hopes to overcome, the two spots by the Alliance for Secure AI offer different messages for different audiences \u2014 at a time when AI regulation is one of the more contentious issues in the passage of Trump\u2019s budget bill.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are the odds of killer robots annihilating humanity?\u201d Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) asks Elon Musk in a clip from his podcast that airs on\u00a0the right-targeted ad spot<\/a>, which is running on Fox News and Newsmax.<\/p>\n \u201cLikely 20 percent,\u201d Musk responds, before a clip where Steve Bannon warns that for tech companies, \u201cproductivity\u201d gains mean \u201chuman beings who are now tech workers eliminated.\u201d<\/p>\n And in\u00a0the left-of-center spot<\/a>\u00a0aimed at MSNBC and CNN, New York Times podcaster Ezra Klein warns that AI will be \u201cthe single most disruptive thing to hit labor markets \u2014 ever,\u201d before cutting to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) saying \u201cthe job you have today ain\u2019t going to be here in 10 or 15 years.\u201d<\/p>\n The ads aim to add weight to a growing \u201cstrange bedfellows\u201d left-right consensus worried about the risks of the American tech sector\u2019s headlong rush toward ever-more-powerful AIs, founder and chief executive Brendan Steinhauser told The Hill.<\/p>\n Steinhauser, a Texas-based political consultant and former Tea Party organizer who ran Sen. John Cornyn\u2019s (R-Texas) 2014 reelection campaign, told The Hill recent polling shows \u201cthe American people are with us, and they\u2019re ahead of the politicians.\u201d<\/p>\n April polling in Pew showed\u00a0twice as many Americans think AI will harm them<\/a>\u00a0as believe it will help them. Those concerns were\u00a0echoed<\/a>\u00a0in a March YouGov poll, which also found that a third of respondents were worried about AI causing \u201cthe end of the human race on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n The ads come out as AI becomes a yawning fault line in Republican politics. Despite Musk\u2019s warnings about the dangers of AI, Cruz remains a major AI booster, and from his position as chair of the powerful Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee has sought to keep states from regulating it \u2014 or, as he describes it, slowing its pace of development.<\/p>\n “We are in a global race for leadership in AI, and the winner will dominate the coming decades, both economically and militarily,” Cruz\u00a0said in May<\/a>, arguing that \u201clight touch\u201d regulation helped springboard the twin revolutions of the Internet and fracking.<\/p>\n In the contentious Trump budget bill, Cruz initially sought to withhold $42 billion in badly needed broadband funding from states that passed bills regulating AI \u2014 as states from Tennessee to California have done.<\/p>\n That move spurred a bipartisan wave of opposition. An alliance of 40 attorneys general \u2014 many of whom agree on little else \u2014 sent Congressional leaders a\u00a0letter<\/a>\u00a0opposing the language, as did\u00a0more than 260 state lawmakers<\/a>. Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) released a a June\u00a0press call<\/a>\u00a0to decry a measure that they said would leave Americans \u201cvulnerable to AI harm.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Other opponents ranged from Sanders to Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga) \u2014 members whose common thread, Steinhauser said, is they’re all \u201ca little weird, a little radical, and principled \u2014 who will stand up to their party.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the past weeks, Cruz has walked the AI supremacy language back in the face of that opposition. First, the penalties for states that continued to regulate AI were reduced from losing access to billions in broadband funding to forfeiting their share of a $500 million fund of AI infrastructure money.<\/p>\n Then on Sunday,\u00a0a deal between Cruz and Blackburn<\/a>\u00a0shortened the moratorium from ten to five years, and added carve-outs for state laws targeting deepfakes, child pornography or some forms of fraud.<\/p>\n But the core tension remains. \u201cYou can\u2019t say you support working people and then replace us with machines,\u201d Teamsters president Sean O\u2019Brien\u00a0said last week<\/a>\u00a0on the social platform X.\u00a0<\/p>\n In an op-ed in Fox, he warned that Big Tech wants \u201cdriverless trucks crisscrossing our roads without oversight. Delivery drones flying over our neighborhoods without regulation. Fully automated warehouses and ports operated by machine.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, religious groups like\u00a0the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Southern Baptist Convention<\/a>\u00a0(SBC) have released statements warning of the dangers of unregulated AI to Americans economic and environmental conditions \u2014 as well as to their souls.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Fall has adversely affected every aspect of creation, including the development and use of these powerful innovations,\u201d the SBC wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cWe call upon civic, industry, and government leaders to develop, maintain, regulate, and use these technologies with the utmost care and discernment, upholding the unique nature of humanity as the crowning achievement of God\u2019s creation.\u201d<\/p>\n The threat of AI has the power to unite these groups into a new social movement, Steinhauser argued, because its challenge is so deeply \u201cmetaphysical\u201d \u2014 a potential assault on what it means to be human. <\/p>\n That universal quality makes the topic so “big, existential and multifaceted,” Steinhauser said, that he hopes it will repel easy polarization.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a latent fear of being replaced,\u201d he said. \u201cAs workers, and also as a species.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A new advocacy group focused on building a left-right alliance to push for regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) rolled out a six-figure ad campaign Monday\u00a0targeting the Washington area. In a<\/p>\n