I finally had time to read Kate Gage’s brilliant Political AI Field Guide: Factions and Beliefs. The Guide defines 6 factions shaping AI now in US politics. It describes how the money flows, which issues each faction cares about, where coalitions and schisms are, which issues shake up those coalitions in unexpected ways, who is using what vocabulary, and what those words are meant to signal politically. It’s clear, super helpful, and does a great job of showing, especially in this overheated week, how what gets claimed as new and special in the AI “debate” looks a lot like familiar political fights and geographies.

Two things I noted in particular, for my own interests:

First, that the AI Ethics camp has “intellectual influence, [but] minimal/no public PAC structure or political money.” It’s not surprising, but it is depressing, that activists who are working on present harms like “algorithmic bias, data worker exploitation, copyright, water and energy use” don’t have even a trickle of PAC money flowing under them.

Second, that for nonprofits who want to clarify if or how they adopt AI in real life, seeing the political fight around AI actually helps expand the conversation. It de-abstracts (probably not a word) the conversation, and embeds it in familiar political geographies which can help anchor in-house conversations about adoption. I’ll certainly be using Gage’s Guide in my ethical AI adoption work with clients.