AI Safety Candidate Loses Big Primary Race in New York

A New York lawmaker named Alex Bores, who pushed for rules to make AI safer, lost a Democratic primary race this week. He was running for a seat in the U.S. Congress from New York's 12th District. His opponent, Micah Lasher, was picked by the current congressman, Rep. Jerry Nadler, to take his place. The race drew national attention because both AI companies and safety groups spent millions of dollars trying to shape the outcome.

More than $27 million was spent on this one primary race, making it one of the most expensive of its kind. About $13 million came from a group linked to the AI company Anthropic, which supported Bores. About $8 million came from a group called Leading the Future, backed by big tech companies like OpenAI and Palantir. That is a huge amount of money for a single local primary election.

Bores worked in the tech industry before becoming a politician, including time at a company called Palantir. This background made him a real threat to AI companies that want to avoid strict government rules. He had a rare skill: he could explain complicated tech ideas in plain language that ordinary voters could understand. Then he could turn those ideas into actual laws.

One of Bores's biggest achievements was helping write a law called the RAISE Act. This law set new rules for AI transparency and safety in New York and was signed in December. Lasher, who won the race, actually helped write the RAISE Act alongside Bores. Several other states have since begun working on similar laws.

Even though Bores lost, some say the big tech companies did not truly win. Dean Ball, a former Trump AI adviser who now works at OpenAI, noted that Lasher holds some views on AI that are even stricter than Bores's. He suggested that the groups spending money against Bores may not have gotten the result they were hoping for. One policy expert called it 'a strategic blunder on multiple levels.'

Connor Leahy of a nonprofit called ControlAI said AI companies fear candidates who speak openly about the risks of the technology. 'Candidates who speak clearly about the dangers of unchecked AI, including superintelligence and the accompanying risk of human extinction, are exactly the candidates the corporations fear and the people want,' he said. ControlAI has support from more than 100 U.K. lawmakers. It has also been briefing members of the U.S. Congress.

In the end, Bores got 35,822 votes and Lasher got 40,106, according to NBC News. Lasher had strong backing from New York Governor Kathy Hochul and former NYC mayor Mike Bloomberg. Bores had been climbing an uphill battle from the start, but the race gave him a much bigger national profile. He said future victories would be built on the progress made during this campaign.

This race also raised questions about the AI industry's election strategy. Some compared it to the crypto industry's super PAC called Fairshake, which spent big to remove lawmakers who opposed it. But AI is proving to be a different issue than crypto. Voters seem to care deeply about AI's effect on jobs, the environment, and children's safety.

In other tech news, stock markets saw a sharp drop in technology shares this week. Companies that make computer chips, like SanDisk and Micron, lost more than 13 percent of their value on Tuesday. Samsung and SK Hynix each fell more than 12 percent, and South Korea's main stock index dropped about 10 percent. Markets appeared to rebound on Wednesday.

The sell-off seemed to start after Google's parent company, Alphabet, had its worst single day in the stock market in over a year on Monday. Investors were worried after Google lost two top AI researchers — Noam Shazeer and Nobel Prize winner John Jumper — to rivals OpenAI and Anthropic. Despite the big drops, many experts say there is no reason to panic. One analyst said the pullback is 'healthy' and 'good for the markets.'