While the Elon Musk–Sam Altman trial in Oakland, Calif., is dominating headlines this week, 3,000 miles away, a Capitol Hill event with far less fanfare may prove even more significant for the future of AI in America.
On Wednesday evening, Sen. Bernie Sanders hosted a panel featuring top Chinese AI officials tied to Beijing’s Ministry of Science and Technology — including Xue Lan of Tsinghua University and Zeng Yi of the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance — to discuss the “existential threat” of artificial intelligence and the need for international cooperation.
The gathering is a striking illustration of how AI doomerism — the belief that advanced AI poses an existential threat to humanity — has quietly forged one of the stranger coalitions in modern politics. Socialists, Hollywood unions, Jan. 6 organizers and Chinese government officials are now aligned in trying to slow down American AI development under the guise of saving humanity.
“You have this huge ecosystem pushing AI doomerism with zero regard for the consequences — the main one being that America will fall behind in the global AI race,” Nathan Leamer, executive director of Build American AI, told me. “And they genuinely don’t seem bothered by it.”
And according to a report released this week from the Bull Moose Project, doomers have been spending a fortune.
A tight network of donors, with former Facebook executive Dustin Moskovitz’s Coefficient Giving at the center, has already spent $5.9 billion and has $37.8 billion more publicly pledged, according to the report.
They have given out more than $611 million in donations to candidates (99.8% of whom are Democrats), dark money groups and so-called AI safety organizations such as Future of Life Institute, the report adds.
While those sums flow overwhelmingly to the left, conservatives are also embracing the anti-AI push and partnering with leftwing groups.
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Last month, Amy Kremer — best known for organizing the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally — hosted a bipartisan town hall in New York alongside progressives and AI engineers to discuss limiting AI’s power.
This event came days after the AI doomer policy group the Future of Life released an AI declaration to hold AI companies accountable. It included signatories from SAG-AFTRA to progressives Ralph Nader and Susan Rice to conservatives like Kremer.
To be sure, there are legitimate concerns about AI including deepfakes, job displacement, and genuine safety risks. And they all need to be regulated. But critics argue the rhetoric has gone off the rails.
One group, Alliance for a Better Future, ran an ad earlier this month labeling AI innovators as “Digital Epsteins,” while conservative activist Joe Allen frames it as “spiritual warfare.”
“It’s definitely not organic. We are seeing this network of operatives and funders from the far left and far right, and increased hyperbole to a degree that is beyond normal,” Leamer told NYNext. “It is truly an effort to hamstring American innovation and growth and hinder our companies from competing globally.”
While he didn’t sign the latest manifesto, Dario Amodei is arguably one of the bigger winners of the doom ideology. The Anthropic CEO is regularly accused of being alarmist about the impact of AI and this February his company dropped $20 million into a pro-regulation Super PAC).
Techno-optimists like Leamer and longtime Democratic stragetist Josh Vlasto believe that alarmism is preventing America from passing a clear framework supporting innovation. They argue doomers are pushing for strict state-level bills which would create a regulatory patchwork so onerous only the largest companies could comply. The move could hamper innovation in the US and cede power to China.
“Most of what the public hears is catastrophic language, problems, and no solutions which threatens to undermine American AI leadership and disrupt any thoughtful policy process,” Vlasto told NYNext. “China just rolled out their five-year plan for AI … This group doesn’t want America to have a five-year plan… they just want to control for themselves.”
Leamer notes that while America’s doomers raise billions to slow domestic innovation, Beijing is racing ahead with no such handicap.
“The consequence is being unable to compete,” he said. “And they don’t seem concerned about that at all.”
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