Turns out telling people your technology will replace their jobs, devour their electricity, and possibly end civilization isn’t the winning sales pitch billionaires imagined. Imagine spending hundreds of millions buying political influence, only to discover voters don’t enjoy being treated like obsolete hardware.

I don't think they plan on voters being an insurmountable problem.

That’s the unsettling part. When billionaires spend fortunes shaping elections, it’s reasonable to ask whether they see voters as citizens to persuade or obstacles to manage. Democracy becomes a lot less inconvenient when you can fund the candidates, influence the platforms hosting the debate, and lobby the people writing the rules. All perfectly legal, of course.

Y'all should stop using the word lobby and call it what it is. Bribery. The only reason your country isn't stupid corrupt at face value is because you legalized bribery.

Don't forget cryptocurrency (UK Reform party big whoopsie)

Annoyingly it also turned the word "lobby" into a contaminated dirty word, even though lobbying is a healthy and important part of a functional democracy.

Any group collectively arguing in favour of their interest to the government is a lobby. That group can be anything from employers, to unions, to civil rights advocates.

The problematic part is the bribery, not the fact that there is interest groups lobbying the government.

AI is still not viable business. All that fear mongering is to create an alternative revenue sources.

"look, I created a monster that can destroy us all. Please give me money to contain and tame it. We can't destroy it because our enemies are creating their own monsters."

Financial obesity is neurotoxic, an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.

Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but trillionaires should be forced to transition into billionaires, and billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.

telling people your technology will replace their jobs, devour their electricity, and possibly end civilization isn’t the winning sales pitch billionaires imagined.

"but what you guys aren't getting is the fact that it'll make me a lot more money."

Hello Americans! Please vote! Sincerely, everyone else.

I’m not trusting the US voting system anymore. I think it’s going to be rigged and they won’t get over the republicans. I still hope that midterms will change the way USA behave, but I’m not going to hold my breath for it.

Turns out that taking hubris to far, thinking that the public will suck it all up just because they always did does have its turning point.

Well, all of our politicians are and that's the problem

AI Billionaires Are Flooding Money Into Politics are flooding politics with money, or pouring money into politics.

This is grade school stuff, FFS!

The next step seems obvious: they'll take a page from the tobacco, gun, and meat industries and instead create fake think tanks or associations to funnel political money semi-anonymously.

Yeah. Rigged or not it's not going to be the landslide everyone is waiting for.

I'm sick of all the shiny shoes and the posturing. I need a serious person with substance.

Stupid sexy Stalin...

I can only hope this is true. Most voters aren't paying a bit of attention to where the money comes from.

They're using AI. They think it's wonderful, they've barely heard about the controversy around data centers, and think "data centers are where the internet it, yOU lIkE thE inTErNeT, Don'T yoU?"

The Top 10 AI Uses in 2025 (none of which it does very well):

• Therapy and companionship
• Organizing my life
• Finding purpose
• Enhanced learning
• Summarizing content
• Generating ideas
• Generating code (for professionals)
• Improving code (for professionals)
• Creativity
• Visual art and design

That has already been happening for years.

Odds are þe title was written by AI

My thoughts exactly. I know two folks who are going all in with AI and haven't even considered any controversy. Feels like they live on another planet. Hell, one of the guys was even showing off his pervert glasses and when I called them pervert glasses he laughed and said he hadn't heard that before.

I really hope those folks are in the minority.

All Dems have to do is run with Data Center Prohibition as their main issue, and they would win EVERY election, and destroy the MAGA movement. Even Republicans hate Data Centers, and ALL MAGA candidates LOVE them. No MAGA candidate cans say anything against them. Florida MAGA candidates are trying to ease it by claiming that they'll make sure that citizens won't pay the costs, but everybody knows they're lying. That's about the most opposition they're putting.

MAGA is the party of UNLIMITED Data Centers. Just slam that over and over, and NOBODY will vote MAGA.

You'd be surprised. Data centers seem like a big issue. My boomer parents hate data centers, as do a lot of rural voters who have them nearby or proposals nearby. But to your point, I also see a lot of people who are aware of problems around ai/data centers/billionaires still using ai.

Dang. Their online filter bubble must be strong. Likely the kind of person who also doesn't care about surveillance capitalism because "it'll recommend good things to buy."

Expect bipartisan legislation to increase the anonymity of PAC money before the year is over.

Quite right! When they email me for advice it's often AI generated, too. I always come across as the insane person telling them not to trust AI (why even ask me for advice if you're just going to vibe coded your site anyway...)

Troll Musk. Vote Democrat.

Would the promise require dems to actually do something about data centers?

The problems with data centers are not the data centers, it's missing regulation about where and how to build data centers.

It's a very American problem.

should also campaign for third option so there are options and idiot party could be left to wither. Current situation leads to slow and inevitable fall as stagnation is the very best that can happen.

Anything that makes republicans weaker is a win for your country.

By backfiring you mean they have nearly total control then yes. Those losers, it has totally backfired on them and now they are richer and more powerful than ever!

Which billionaires aren't flooding money into politics to influence elections? They were doing it long before all the AI drama.

So, you also cannot discern the difference in traditional DCs and AI DCs? I feel like you know and I'm missing something.

Trump's claims of election rigging as so dumb because they can't even come up with a plausible way it could have happened. We have 90,000 polling places, across 50 states, all of whom run elections their own way. There's no central database to hackerman. Best anyone could possibly do is maybe sway the local dog catcher election. Maybe.

We're so fucking dumb, our very first amendment to the Constitution gives us the right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." We should amend that so people wanting to band together for a given cause can get bent. How about that?

Same billionaires are funding the campaigns of both parties. they keep winning no matter who gets elected.

It feels surreal to live among the gullible

Add to that, I have a hunch that a good chunk of people who are the most vocal against AI heavily use AI themselves. like game devs using ai to produce music, and musicians use AI to make posters, and novelists using AI to illustrate their works, many people call for solidarity against AI to save their professions while using AI to replace other professions.

I am one of the most haters on AI, but I two acknowledge that people are hypocrites on the internet

I sleep at night by telling myself they're the minority

Everyone who goes into politics wants money. Musk gives them money. Profit!

Musk should consider skipping the middle man and paying citizens directly for their votes. Proportional to his wealth. Like the taxes we used to charge the wealthy.

You'd think if the crypto was any good, they could just bribe anonymously.

Election race promises are not legally binding unfortunately

You forgot to cite Patrick Boyle here ;)

I wouldn't be surprised at all if Futurism articles are just written by AI tbh...

Low bar journalism and reporting.

Or, and hear me out:

Troll Musk by voting Democrat.

Capitalism is incompatible with democracy.

their efforts aren't buying the political capital they'd hoped for.

Trump did get elected by "AI money" and they all celebrated on stage with him, you know.

Midterms? Yeah, when you are an indisputably shitty President who has broken every campaign promise and is openly deranged, you will likely lose the midterms no matter how much you try to pump Republicans. Diminishing returns.

Usually the "winning" party only holds power for a couple terms, then, after their incompetence has disgusted yet another generation of voters, they lose, only to be replaced by the other party that will repeat the process.

bOtH sIdEs, YeS, oH My

I vote in every election, and you should too. Because it's funny

Give us each $100,000 and I'll consider it.

I thought someone did the math and said if all US billionaires were slaughtered and the money divided amongst US population, we'd all get like $400k+.

I always wondered if it would've been cheaper in Iraq and Afghanistan to just pay everyone to hand over their weapons and leave.