Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections

bloodinthemachine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 87 posts

Re: The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections

#21

Post by weaksauce »

wat10000 wrote: post #11
gruez wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never? Even the whole "corporations are people too" meme where this sentiment presumably originated from is often misunderstood. It doesn't mean corporations have the same rights as people, it just means they can conduct transactions and can sue/be used. It doesn't mean they can vote.

It does in one town in Delaware, at least: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/delaware-court-upho...

The thing that stuck with me is the awful reasoning by the judge: "Judge rules Fenwick Island's corporate voting does not dilute human votes"

How could corporations voting not dilute the human votes by the very nature and reason of voting in the first place?

Re: The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections

#23

Post by somenameforme »

AvAn12 wrote: post #18

If businesspeople want to get involved in politics, they should have the courage to run for office like anybody else. Lurking on the sidelines and waiving money around is really lame and laughable.

There are people who couldn't care less about political power, but want certain laws passed, and have lots of money. And then there those who couldn't care less about much of anything besides gaining political power and see money and quid quo pro as means to achieve that.

Re: The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections

#24

Post by mc32 »

jordanb wrote: post #17
mc32 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also allows them to be sued. I suppose we could have other mechanisms to sue companies but this is what we’ve come up with.

"Corporate Personhood" allows the corporate entity to be a responsibility sink for the owners. They alternative is that people can sue the owners/officers directly for the "actions" of the corporation.

Sure but you need to be able to get to “someone” when say the owner skips town or dies or… plus this firewall makes it so people will be more willing to build businesses.

Re: The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections

#25

Post by AvAn12 »

somenameforme wrote: post #23
AvAn12 wrote: post #18

If businesspeople want to get involved in politics, they should have the courage to run for office like anybody else. Lurking on the sidelines and waiving money around is really lame and laughable.

There are people who couldn't care less about political power, but want certain laws passed, and have lots of money. And then there those who couldn't care less about much of anything besides gaining political power and see money and quid quo pro as means to achieve that.

Then those people are on the sidelines like every other citizen. Play the game or be a spectator. Nobody gets to have it both ways.

Re: The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections

#26

Post by voidfunc »

doodlebugging wrote: post #19

Probably a sign that it is past time to tightly regulate all AI-aligned companies and their products to set up guard rails to prevent this level of corruption. I am a person who lives in a state where it is totally legal for lobbyists to walk the floor of the state legislature handing out envelopes of cash to any representative who will line up behind their proposed legislation. Bribery buys state laws here and it bu…

Hahaha... regulation lol. That aint happening in the US. If you do see regulation it will be so crippled as to be meaningless but it'll give something politicians can talk about as "for the people". All regulations are written by industry insiders.

Re: The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections

#28

Post by XorNot »

tines wrote: post #15
gruez wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never? Even the whole "corporations are people too" meme where this sentiment presumably originated from is often misunderstood. It doesn't mean corporations have the same rights as people, it just means they can conduct transactions and can sue/be used. It doesn't mean they can vote.

I thought that the "corporations are people" meme was the actual rationale for why corpos "should" be allowed to spend money on elections: spending money for political purposes is free speech, and people have the right to free speech, and corpos are people, so corpos have the right to spend money for political purposes.

That was the Citizens United reasoning yes and it was wholly absurd unless you really wanted to empower the executive class.

Re: The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections

#29

Post by thatmf »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #4

Tech Influence Watch site: https://influence.citationneeded.news/ ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632474 ) (Blog post: https://www.citationneeded.news/tech-influence-watch/ )

Yeah, this is amazing and should be submitted here on its own if it hasn't already.

I just found that one of my reps got an absurd amount of money from some shadowy group called "Think Big". Which is in turn part of a larger org called "Leading the Future" [0], which is:

> A coordinated network of AI-industry super PACs working to head off stricter AI regulation, chiefly by pushing a single federal framework that would override stronger state-level rules on issues like consumer protection and liability. Leading the Future is the lead committee, channeling money to the Democratic-facing Think Big and the Republican-facing American Mission. All draw on the same core backers — chiefly Andreessen Horowitz, and OpenAI president Greg Brockman and his wife.

[0]: https://influence.citationneeded.news/2026/networks/leading-...

Post reply on HN