a new report According to a CNBC article, lobbyists involved in the AI industry have been very busy over the last year. In fact, in 2023, AI lobbying increased by 185% year over year. The analysis, based on disclosures provided to the nonprofit OpenSecrets, found that a long list of companies that tried to influence Congress last year included prominent AI businesses such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, and AMD. shown to be included. The same goes for companies where AI is at the core of their business, such as Palantir, Tesla, and even his TikTok owner ByteDance.
This isn’t all that surprising, but it’s certainly a grim demonstration of the amount of money Silicon Valley is willing to throw at swaying its new golden calf regulatory path.
In recent months, we’ve seen multiple examples of influence efforts by the tech industry.a report In September, Bloomberg noted the extent to which AI lobbyists are courting state governments as part of a coordinated effort to steer state legislatures away from new regulations that could be detrimental to their clients’ business interests.This story is about how lobbyists helped repeal California’s bill That would regulate how companies use AI.
Similarly, story A Politico article from last year described how a network of “AI advisors” descended on Washington, D.C., and took up positions in prominent congressional offices and think tanks in an attempt to spread the gospel of “effective altruism” and light regulatory schemes. The situation was introduced.
All of these efforts are meant to undermine key players in the AI industry (*cough, cough* Sam Altman and Elon Musk) who have been pretending for the past few months that they actually want the government to regulate their business. It will help you uncover it. If they were serious about regulation, they wouldn’t expect these companies to spend so much money on the legislative process.
So much for the moral high ground of tech executives. Here are some other things happening in AI this week.
