Theres a prudent path forward for AI and pols need to push it over politics
The midterm elections are right around the corner, and both parties are about as popular as a Monday-morning visit to the DMV.The time-tested solution? Find a scapegoat, go negative and blame the other side.This year the weaponized bogeyman is artificial intelligence.Many Americans are falling for the anti-AI information operation.They shouldn’t.A new poll from Politico has the grisly details: 63% of Americans think AI has the potential to “destroy humanity.”A majority of both Democrats and Republicans now think AI could herald the apocalypse.That’s quite a sea change in less than a year: In December 2025, a poll from Navigator Research found Americans split roughly equally among those favoring data centers, opposing data centers or ambivalent.It’s not hard to figure out what happened.Days before the new Politico poll, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei stressed the same existential stakes, arguing AI industry titans “owe it to humanity to try” to slow down the Frankenstein’s monster they’ve unleashed on the masses.OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has a “sociopathic lack of concern” for humanity, according to a loose-lipped company board member.Elon Musk is calling for an industry slowdown, too.Apparently, the world’s wealthiest man isn’t above some anticompetitive regulatory capture.AI industry leaders seem to have settled on a message: Our product is going to kill your job, and it might end all of humanity, but trust us and do what we say anyway.How compelling!It’s not often that you see industry leaders fan the flames of a moral panic ignited by their own product.Harvard Business School should offer a case study on how not to market and sell one’s wares, starring Amodei and Altman.Unsurprisingly, given the polling, prominent figures across the political spectrum have found common cause on AI regulation.This week, Soviet Union-honeymooning communist Bernie Sanders and MAGA maestro Steve Bannon spoke at the same anti-AI confab in Washington, DC.Support ...