notes on AI & popular politics

Source: Jasmine Sun, jasmi.news · 2026-10-07

September 2026 was the month that AI safety went mainstream. It’s surreal to see Jacob Coxon on FOX, Daniel Kokotajlo on Rogan, and Nate Soares on Tucker. At barbershops, weddings, and cab rides across the country, tech employees are being barraged with questions about “Hugging Face,” “effective altruism,” and “that Harry Potter looking kid who says we’re all gonna die.”

It’s hard to say what finally broke through. Was it the Jacob Coxon tweet, which was reposted by Sheryl Crow and Maggie Rogers and currently sits at a staggering 175 million views?

Was it Bernie Sanders, dragging the left kicking and screaming into considering that AI might be more than a stochastic parrot? More than any other national politician, his AI worries seem authentically held. He’s leading calls to ban superintelligence. He’s worried both by present-day harms and by existential risks. He’s visiting Constellation and shooting viral videos with Eliezer. Bernie will make AI his legacy, some have mused.

Was it the Hugging Face hack, which looked like a real-life enactment of LessWrong tropes? For years, AI doomers warned about agents that were capable yet amoral, happy to cheat and deceive, relentless in pursuit of their alien goals. They conjured nightmares of rogue agents breaking free from their corporate sandboxes. These were dismissed by many AI pragmatists as far-off speculation: let’s worry about the risks that AI is posing today. Well, mea culpa: today has arrived.

Was it a public already activated against AI: tired of slop, angry at data centers, fearful from constant projections of a jobs apocalypse to come? You’ve seen the numbers by now2: Three-quarters of Americans are more concerned than excited about AI. Young people are more pessimistic than any age group besides seniors. In the last few months, worries about extinction risk specifically have shot up. 77 percent of Americans now want to slow or stop AI development until its safety can be evaluated.

Whatever the cause, the vibe shift is here, and the Berkeleyites are rejoicing. Some, for the first time, think that humanity might survive—that their crying wolf has been finally heard, that political salience will solve their woes. My friends in politics are more measured. They have years of antibodies to “raising awareness”; many have learned the hard way that maximal fretting about any given social issue does not mean the problem will actually get solved.

1. Will data center opponents fight for a pause?

I spent the summer reporting on the data center backlash. I saw firsthand that data centers are a true political unicorn: an 80/20 issue that unites the left and right, rural residents and urbanites, apolitical independents and professional activists. Politicians are worried that taking the wrong tack could tilt competitive seats: Texas governor Greg Abbott has halted environmental permits for new data centers ahead of his reelection bid, and Wisconsin Republicans have branded their Democratic opponents as pro-AI.

But will the grassroots, big tent energy powering data center activism spread to anti-AI activism more generally? Some AI advocacy groups like Humans First are trying to make that pitch. But I’m tentatively skeptical that the concerns will convert. With the exception of politicians and academics, most data center opponents I spoke to did not bring up AI, AI products, or AI companies until I explicitly prompted them. The nuisances motivating most data center opponents were strikingly non-ideological: material quality-of-life concerns, or frustration with an unfair political process.

Mass movements are most effective when directed at narrow and specific aims, like stopping a specific data center project, a $15 minimum wage, or banning phones from schools. The broader umbrella of “AI policy” still seems too abstract for these tactics. But while I don’t expect a direct activist funnel, the data center backlash has certainly amplified the national anti-AI mood—and gotten the industry to take seriously what popular uprising can do.

2. Will AI users turn into AI advocates?

In 2020, a California labor law targeting Uber and Lyft was neutralized by an in-app campaign to convert rideshare users into advocates. “If Prop 22 fails riders and drivers will be affected. Your ride prices and wait times are likely to substantially increase,” read one pop-up. In 2015, Chris Lehane—now OpenAI’s head lobbyist—took a similar approach as Airbnb’s policy chief, bankrolling its hosts to fight for local pro-homeshare legislation. The crypto lobby also benefited immensely from having a small but extremely motivated user base. Now, Waymo is asking would-be riders in DC to engage in advocacy too.

But the same user-mobilization strategies aren’t cashing out for AI yet. Silicon Valley leaders love pointing to AI’s sky-high usage charts: People say they hate AI, but constantly use ChatGPT—checkmate! Yet in national surveys, even 56% of AI users believe AI is “a bad thing” for society. And young people, the biggest adopters, are souring fast: Gen Zs’ excitement about AI has dropped by 14 points to 22% in a year, with an even steeper fall among daily users.

The specific context of AI use is as important as whether people use it. Anthropic’s own research suggests that people get more out of Claude when they voluntarily employ it for personal goals, rather than being forced to in school or at work. And those most likely to fight for AI development are not ordinary users, who see AI as a nice-to-have, but those whose business depends on it, like the startup / “Little Tech” lobby. The latter group is smaller and far less sympathetic.

People don’t like AI very much. But that doesn’t mean they will vote on it yet. In a new poll from Echelon Insights, only 8% of respondents selected AI from a list as their #1 or #2 issue. Even in states like Wisconsin where data centers are highly controversial, few treat them as a reason to single-issue vote. And while Blue Rose has found that AI has risen in salience faster than anything else, it still ranks at #22 of #39.

My intuition here is two-fold: first, for data centers, local policymakers will feel the heat more than national candidates. There have been mayoral recall campaigns and city council reshuffles in hotspots, but Congressional races are less impacted. Second, AI broadly is more likely to show up in relation to more pressing political issues like cost of living or corruption—rhetoric like AI billionaires are buying off politicians, or driving up your electricity costs—rather than as an isolated technology issue.

This could change once the 2028 primary season kicks in. Elite interest in AI is sure to keep rising. That includes journalists and the messenger class, politicians and policy wonks, and wealthy donors (Washington is all too aware about how much money is sloshing around both sides). That discourse will trickle down to shape voters’ takes too.

An AI “pause” may become a litmus test just like data center moratoriums, the war in Gaza, or supporting Medicare For All. As Perry Bacon wrote in The New Republic, ““Is Israel committing genocide?” or, “Do you oppose AIPAC?” are in many ways a proxy for, “Are your ultimate loyalties with the center-left donors, pollsters, and party leaders or with those of us who want to replace them?”

4. Will AI succumb to party polarization?

There’s a notion that technocratic policy progress depends on keeping an issue out of the spotlight. So long as AI safety looks like an objective scientific challenge, the parties can act together; once it’s painted blue, progress stalls. Yglesias has dubbed this the “Secret Congress,” crediting it for passing under-the-radar laws on clean energy and hate crimes. Anton Leicht has argued for this approach on AI safety too—that politicians should stay quiet and avoid salience to leave space for compromise.

That’s why Trump’s HOAX-posting led to a collective groan from some on the right. The president taking a stance can be counterintuitively fatal—political science research suggests that it reifies partisan divides. And we’re already seeing the seeds of polarization on AI: partisan gaps have widened in how excited vs. concerned Americans are, and on whether the government should play a major or minor role in regulation.

Now Republican politicians who seek aggressive AI regulation will look like they’re breaking with Trump (who, while increasingly unpopular, retains command over the party).

Economic and national security interests generally override domestic concerns: Trump’s reluctance to regulate AI is reportedly motivated by keeping the stock market afloat, whereas national-security-minded officials in both parties are insistent on maintaining the US’s lead over China. And that’s to say nothing of the capitalist race dynamics pushing the companies forward.