AI Industry Mobilizes to Defeat Alex Bores

The AI industry, which unironically tweets about 'alignment' and 'democratisation,' has formed a super PAC — Leading the Future — to topple New York Assemblymember Alex Bores, author of the state's toughest AI law. Bores's crime? The AI Regulatory, Ethics, and Accountability Act, which he dared to introduce in an election cycle. Now venture capitalists are pouring cash into a primary challenge against a man who literally has a degree in AI from MIT and previously worked at a startup. You cannot make this up.

The super PAC's war chest is being wielded against the one legislator in Albany who actually understands how transformer gradients work. Instead of, say, lobbying for amendments or engaging in grown-up debate, they've decided the rational response is to bankrupt a primary challenger. Tech's message to regulators is crystal clear: you can either be part of the future or get primaried into unemployment, and they will fund whichever option you choose least. This is less 'move fast and break things' and more 'move fast and break democracy.'

Meanwhile, the irony is so thick it could run inference. These same firms hire DC lobbying shops to plead for 'nuanced federal regulation,' then spend millions murdering the only nuanced state regulator who emerged organically from their own talent pool. If this law dies, it sets a precedent that any state legislator who writes an actual enforceable AI law faces a retaliatory asteroid funded by portfolio companies. The outcome is clear: industry will enjoy precisely as much regulation as it chooses to tolerate, and candidate Bores — before he's even lost — has already done more to align AI than the entire safety division at Anthropic. For goodness sake, someone at least buy the man a drink.