The future of AI regulation is dating strange, deeply troubled bedfellows

Hello and welcome to Controllerthis newspaper The Verge subscribers about tech politics, tech impact, and tech shenanigans in Washington, DC. (If you are not registered, you can ride here.) We are back after a two week break, during most of the time I was busy in the Netherlands with a family wedding, and a trip to the Heineken Experience, which means, ~experience~.

Before I left, I asked everyone in Washington to relax while I was gone. This clearly did not happen, and I returned to a political situation that can best be described as such invite from Community where the room is on fire. Let’s get into that.

If you want to get a good idea of ​​how Washington insiders viewed the release of Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIVThe encyclical that lays out Catholic teaching on artificial intelligence, let me take you to a real insider’s room in Washington.

Here’s a case in point: a black-tie gala last week at the Waldorf Astoria, Trump’s former hotel, hosted by the Washington AI Network. In attendance, seen among the dancers dressed as stick robots: AI advocates, AI security non-profits, tech industry representatives, tech journalists, Shark Tank‘s Kevin O’Leary, senior management officers – Director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Mehmet OzDepartment of Energy Under Secretary Darío Gil – and me. Ambassador of the Pope Archbishop Gabriele Cacciathe Vatican’s top lawyer in the United States, also present, made his first appearance to address the crowd, who were waiting to celebrate the emerging power players of artificial intelligence. (Yes, Kevin O’Leary was receiving an award. It was such an elaborate ceremony.)

The ambassador tries to convey the pope’s message of protecting people and the human condition before innovating and profiting. But I don’t hear him at all. The salad courses are out, and Caccia is drowned out by the sound of cutting plates and people complaining to their colleagues at the table, because this is an important time for communication.

Even if the community is happy about it Magnifica Humanitasthe pope does not have legislative power, and cannot make strict laws, so the pope is not immediately interested in Washington. In every dinner conversation, the AI ​​industry seems to be dealing with some tunnel vision. In general, corporate lobbyists try to make friends with everyone, Democrat and Republican alike, and cultivate that relationship for as many years as possible without resentment or partisanship. But that is not a possibility Donald Trump‘s Washington, where supporting a Democrat in the past was considered disloyal, even to the tech oligarchs. (Billionaire and commercial astronaut Jared Isaacman(The nomination for NASA president, for example, was frozen for several months after Trump learned he had donated to a Democrat.)

On the other hand, if they give him money and make him look good, Trump it can be be sure to give those oligarchs all the directives they want and force the Republicans to do what they say. But even this control is not easy. Here’s an amazingly short summary of Trump’s AI-focused order:

But while Washington can be chaotic and unpredictable, especially with Trump as president, there are two fixed points in time that everyone can plan for: once every two years, there will be federal elections in November, and the winners of those races will be sworn into Congress the following January. There will, of course, be some change in the balance of power. But no one can safely expect you WHO it will hold that power or what it will look like, leading to an endless series of unknowns for tech companies: What happens if the Republicans lose the House? What happens if they lose the House majority by one member, or 10, or 20? What does this situation look like, but in the Senate? Which Democrats will run which committees? what if Alex Bores are you chosen? What if the honest Trump fires our Republican partner? What happens when a friendly Democrat is pushed by a progressive on something we have no control over, like their support for Israel? Anyway.

But the interests of the technology sector itself may be a major problem in the coming terms. It’s easy for a voter to understand the results of famous, instantly recognizable Big Tech CEOs standing behind Trump at the inauguration, or a golden statue from Tim Cook changing the expected price of an iPhone, or a check from a tech giant financing a gaudy ballroom (of all things). In this cycle, it is even easier for voters to draw a straight line from those visible moments to the increasing and often unwanted presence of AI in every aspect of their daily lives. Those voters complain to their representatives, those representatives respond, and if they don’t, the voters vote them out of office in November.

Related light reading recommendation: One of the resources I will be using a lot at that time is the reporter Molly WhiteTech Influence Watch’s new project, which tracks all the political costs of the AI ​​industry over the coming period. White had started the project as a way to track the use of crypto in the 2024 election, but in a post announcing its expansion, he pointed out that crypto politics and AI were inextricably linked – so linked, in fact, that the donors and strategists driving the AI ​​super PACs were the exact same people. “PACs may look different from the outside, but they increasingly serve the same purpose with complementary goals: eliminate the tech sector, reduce consumer protections, and allow tech companies to make even bigger profits at the expense of everyday people.”