Zürcher Nachrichten - AI firms flex lobbying muscle on both side of Atlantic

Flush with cash, the firms are also wooing the general public, insisting that artificial intelligence will be a force for good -- and not a destroyer of jobs or an existential threat for humanity.

ChatGPT maker OpenAI unveiled this month a 13-page "Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age" that calls for new taxation and expanded safety nets to ensure society withstands the arrival of superintelligent systems.

It has even bought TBPN, a technology-focused talk show, to help shape the narrative.

But the policy document also came just days after a public backlash forced the company to halt plans for a sexually explicit chatbot.

OpenAI has also faced legal challenges from families of teenagers who say ChatGPT caused harm and even suicide among young people, prompting the company to introduce an age-verification system.

"This is a turning point" for the industry, and companies "are spending a fortune to try to get favourable measures passed in their patch", said Alexandra Iteanu, a Paris-based lawyer specialising in digital law.

- Politicians in pocket? -

The AI industry has transformed Washington lobbying at extraordinary speed, with more than 3,500 federal lobbyists -- one-fourth of the total -- working on AI issues last year, a 170 percent increase over three years, according to Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group.

The established giants like Meta, Google and Microsoft still dominate spending, but AI start-ups like OpenAI and Anthropic have rapidly built out their Washington presence, hiring elite firms and expanding in-house policy shops.

Anthropic for example has focussed its message on promoting AI safety and tighter regulation.

But OpenAI is also actively pushing the industry's top legislative priority of preventing US states from passing their own laws governing AI, an effort that has twice failed in Congress but remains very much alive, backed by a sympathetic White House.

The influence campaign has moved into electoral politics, with a pro-AI campaign called Leading the Future assembling a $100 million war chest to back AI friendly candidates in the 2026 midterms.

President Donald Trump, a fierce opponent of AI regulation, counts OpenAI's cofounder Sam Altman and its president Greg Brockman among his biggest donors.

European regulators are also feeling the heat, with the French start-up Mistral recently presenting in Brussels a 22-point plan to accelerate AI development on the Continent.

Lobbying outlays by the tech industry have surged 55 percent since 2021 to reach 151 million euros ($177 million) last year, according to study by the Corporate Europe Observatory and LobbyControl, a nonprofit.

- 'Concentration of wealth' -

For Margarida Silva of the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO, a Dutch nonprofit), AI firms are working from playbook of the oil and smoking industries, but with one major difference.

"They're just the wealthiest companies in the world, so they have a lot of money that they can use to put towards lobbying," Silva said.

"When you have such intense corporate lobbying that is based on having such a concentration of wealth, and that is standing in the way of public interest regulations... we are really talking about a democratic threat," she added.

Many executives also cultivate friendships with elected officials to have "privileged channels" with public administrations, said Charles Thibout, a politic science professor at the Sciences Po Strasbourg university in eastern France.

He noted the phalanx of tech moguls at Trump's inauguration last year, and the close ties between Mistral's cofounder Arthur Mensch and French President Emmanuel Macron.

Political leaders are often keen to be seen with AI's top names, Thibout added, if only to help get some of their huge development spending for their states or regions.

But "lawmakers are not fooled", said Iteanu, as enthusiasm for AI has not dispelled public wariness about its potential consequences.

Despite the colossal spending in the United States, for example, opinion polls regularly show that Americans remain highly sceptical about the technology's benefits, and more worried that it spells doom for millions of jobs.

D.Graf--NZN