Anthropic and OpenAI take their beef to the midterm elections
Anthropic and OpenAI take their beef to the midterm elections
Anthropic 与 OpenAI 将竞争带入中期选举
The rival AI companies are backing super PACs spending millions to attack congressional candidates — and each other. 这两家竞争激烈的 AI 公司正在支持超级政治行动委员会（Super PACs），投入数百万美元攻击国会候选人，同时也相互攻击。
Heated rivalry, AI super PAC edition 激烈的竞争：AI 超级政治行动委员会版
Here’s a weird sign of the AI super PACs becoming their own political behemoths: They’re now becoming their own political weaknesses. On Tuesday, New York Democrat congressional candidate Alex Bores, whose campaign leans heavily on promoting AI regulation, challenged Leading the Future — the $100 million pro-AI super PAC funded by Palantir’s Joe Lonsdale, Andreessen Horowitz, and OpenAI’s Greg Brockman — to an in-person, real-world debate. In a press release, the Bores campaign laid out their conditions: Leading the Future could pick the moderator, it could pick its own representative, but it has to commit to a debate before the June 23rd primary. AI 超级政治行动委员会正演变成政治巨头，这出现了一个奇怪的迹象：它们正在成为自身的政治软肋。周二，纽约州民主党国会候选人亚历克斯·博雷斯（Alex Bores）——其竞选活动高度依赖于推动 AI 监管——向“引领未来”（Leading the Future）发起了线下辩论挑战。该委员会是一个由 Palantir 的乔·朗斯代尔（Joe Lonsdale）、安德森·霍洛维茨（Andreessen Horowitz）和 OpenAI 的格雷格·布罗克曼（Greg Brockman）资助的、拥有 1 亿美元资金的亲 AI 超级政治行动委员会。博雷斯竞选团队在新闻稿中提出了条件：“引领未来”可以挑选主持人，也可以挑选自己的代表，但必须承诺在 6 月 23 日初选前进行辩论。
The likelihood of this debate taking place is slim to none. (Leading the Future declined to comment about the debate challenge.) Still, it’s a rapid escalation in a phenomenon I’ve been tracking for months: AI industry super PACs gaining their own political reputations, reflecting the companies and founders who fund them, then using those reputations to fight each other. 这场辩论发生的可能性微乎其微。（“引领未来”拒绝就辩论挑战发表评论。）尽管如此，这标志着我追踪了数月的一种现象正在迅速升级：AI 行业的超级政治行动委员会正在获得属于自己的政治声誉，反映出资助它们的那些公司和创始人的立场，并利用这些声誉相互攻击。
When Leading the Future was launched last year, it was fairly typical for a super PAC, in that it was backed by several wealthy individuals and companies with shared policy goals, operating on both the state and federal election level. (It was, of course, politics on steroids: The Supreme Court famously ruled in Citizens United that corporations had the right to free speech, leading to the creation of special campaign finance vehicles that allowed companies and wealthy donors to donate unlimited sums toward political advocacy groups.) But shortly afterwards, Meta announced that it was launching its own AI-focused super PACs — a sign that the company’s AI interests, political and otherwise, were not necessarily aligned with the entities funding Leading the Future. 去年“引领未来”成立时，它作为一个超级政治行动委员会还算典型，由几位拥有共同政策目标的富人和公司支持，在州和联邦选举层面运作。（当然，这是“类固醇”版的政治：最高法院在“联合公民诉联邦选举委员会案”中裁定企业拥有言论自由权，这导致了特殊竞选财务工具的产生，允许公司和富有的捐赠者向政治倡导团体捐赠无限额的资金。）但不久之后，Meta 宣布将推出自己的 AI 重点超级政治行动委员会——这表明该公司在政治及其他方面的 AI 利益，并不一定与资助“引领未来”的实体一致。
Over time, LTF came to be viewed as a vehicle not for the general AI industry, but for OpenAI specifically. (Several of LTF’s backers are investors in the frontier AI company.) That perception was solidified earlier this year, when Anthropic donated $20 million to Public First Action, a bipartisan super PAC network that’s backing Bores. 随着时间的推移，LTF 被视为不是为整个 AI 行业，而是专门为 OpenAI 服务的工具。（LTF 的几位支持者正是这家前沿 AI 公司的投资者。）今年早些时候，当 Anthropic 向支持博雷斯的跨党派超级政治行动委员会网络“公共优先行动”（Public First Action）捐赠 2000 万美元时，这种看法得到了巩固。
Legally, super PACs are not allowed to coordinate with candidates on things such as ad buys and messaging. But while it’s normal for companies to use super PACs to back candidates against other candidates, it’s rather innovative, perhaps, for companies to use super PACs to attack their corporate rivals (and the candidate is, in some ways, incidental). Now, Public First is synonymous with Anthropic and “doomerism” (in LTF’s terms), and LTF, as Bores put it, is now known as “the Marc Andreessen-Greg Brockman-Joe Lonsdale-backed Leading the Future super PAC.” And the beauty of non-coordination campaign finance laws is that Bores, the coauthor of the New York state RAISE Act, can plausibly distance himself from whatever Anthropic-funded political shenanigans are going on on his behalf. (Corporate money is corporate money.) 在法律上，超级政治行动委员会不允许在广告购买和信息发布等方面与候选人进行协调。虽然公司利用超级政治行动委员会支持候选人去对抗其他候选人是常态，但公司利用超级政治行动委员会来攻击其企业竞争对手（而候选人在某种程度上只是附带的）则相当具有创新性。现在，“公共优先”已成为 Anthropic 和“末日论”（用 LTF 的话来说）的代名词，而正如博雷斯所言，LTF 现在被称为“由马克·安德森、格雷格·布罗克曼和乔·朗斯代尔支持的‘引领未来’超级政治行动委员会”。非协调竞选财务法的妙处在于，作为纽约州《RAISE 法案》的共同起草人，博雷斯可以理直气壮地与任何以他名义进行的、由 Anthropic 资助的政治把戏保持距离。（企业资金终究是企业资金。）
Dark money? More like dork money 黑钱？更像是“书呆子钱”
We haven’t even gone into the shadier world of campaign finance vehicles, including one that might start firing on LTF in order to appease Trump. (Apparently, according to The New York Times, Leading the Future is too bipartisan to be trusted by Republicans.) 我们甚至还没有深入探讨竞选财务工具中更阴暗的世界，其中包括一个可能为了安抚特朗普而开始攻击 LTF 的工具。（据《纽约时报》报道，显然“引领未来”过于跨党派，以至于无法获得共和党人的信任。）
In March, a pro-AI, political advocacy messaging nonprofit called Innovation Council Action revealed itself to the public, run by Donald Trump’s former adviser Taylor Budowich and already boasting a $100 million war chest. Crucially, it received the “blessing” of a recurring Regulator character, David Sacks, former White House special adviser on AI and crypto. ICA will be focused explicitly on promoting Trump’s AI agenda, and that means addressing a new issue inside the Republican Party: populist-leaning candidates unwilling to cave to whatever pro-industry positions Donald Trump has been convinced to repeat at any given time. 今年 3 月，一个名为“创新委员会行动”（Innovation Council Action）的亲 AI 政治倡导非营利组织公开亮相，由唐纳德·特朗普的前顾问泰勒·布多维奇（Taylor Budowich）运营，并已拥有 1 亿美元的竞选资金。关键在于，它获得了本通讯常客、前白宫 AI 和加密货币特别顾问大卫·萨克斯（David Sacks）的“祝福”。ICA 将明确专注于推动特朗普的 AI 议程，这意味着要解决共和党内部的一个新问题：那些不愿屈服于唐纳德·特朗普在任何特定时间被说服重复的任何亲行业立场的民粹主义倾向候选人。
(Who’s pushing this agenda? We currently do not know. ICA is known as a “dark money nonprofit,” which means that unlike super PACs, its donors do not legally have to be disclosed.) （是谁在推动这一议程？我们目前不得而知。ICA 被称为“黑钱非营利组织”，这意味着与超级政治行动委员会不同，其捐赠者在法律上无需披露。）
Time to regulate prediction markets now! 现在是监管预测市场的时候了！
The latest technology causing a meltdown in Congress is prediction markets, which currently exist in a regulatory no man’s land: Is trading on a prediction market gambling, or is it something else completely that deserves its own legislation? The Senate Commerce Committee is holding its first hearing on sports betting and prediction markets, and in a sign that the tech industry is really tech industry-ing, they’re sending in the big guns. 最新导致国会陷入混乱的技术是预测市场，它目前处于监管的“无人区”：在预测市场上交易是赌博，还是完全值得为其单独立法的其他事物？参议院商业委员会正在就体育博彩和预测市场举行首次听证会，而科技行业正在派出重量级人物，这标志着科技行业确实在发挥其“科技行业”的本色。