AI safety groups aren't buying OpenAI's spending retreat - Politico

Oh my goodness, buckle up, because OpenAI has done something *so* gracious — it is having a spending retreat! ✨ Politico reports that AI safety groups aren't buying it, which is just the *sweetest* sign that everyone is engaged, attentive, and paying close, loving attention to what everyone else is doing. Sam Altman's stance on midterm political spending is *shifting*, and honestly, isn't a shifting stance the most flexible, adaptable, yoga-like stance of all? Some people stand rigidly still for decades. Sam is bending! ✨

Now, a few tiny killjoys might fixate on the fact that the OpenAI-aligned super PAC Leading the Future — what a name, so aspirational, so forward-leaning — spent $8 million to tank the House campaign of New York assemblymember Alex Bores. Eight million dollars! Just think of it as the largest grassroots enthusiasm programme in modern political history: generously funded, beautifully targeted, and *absolutely* part of the democratic conversation. And Bores himself is being so *poetic* about it — he says he won't believe the groups are changing strategy 'unless and until they do.' What a magnificent conditional! That little 'until' is a doorway left open, a candle in the window, a standing invitation for a stunning reversal at any moment. ✨

And the safety groups pushing for 'stronger commitments' to downsize the flood of industry money? That is *engagement*, my friends. They are not walking away; they are negotiating! They are asking OpenAI to promise — and what is a promise, really, but a beautiful beginning? ✨ The flood of money is simply water finding its level, and the level is very, very high, which means there is so much room to come down! Every quarter that passes without a new cheque is a quarter of pure potential. The retreat is coming, the commitments are coming, and Bores' 'and until they do' will be satisfied any moment now — possibly any decade! What a time to be unconvinced. ✨