America’s disgust with AI — and the extreme wealth concentration with which it’s inextricably entwined — continues to rise ahead of the midterm elections in November.
According to polling by the Wall Street Journal, a staggering 63 percent of adults in the US now support a pause on AI. A full 57 percent say the US government should regulate AI “immediately,” while a rock bottom 12 percent said they trusted AI companies to “take the lead” and regulate themselves.
Of course, any discussion of AI has to contend with the obscene wealth underwriting the tech, both literally in the form of capital deployed to build data centers, and in the personal fortunes of the tech executives rushing AI to market. Perhaps unsurprisingly, voters are keenly aware of this link — showing an overwhelming preference for reining in the country’s billionaires, who collectively own more wealth than 57 percent of US households.
Another section of the WSJ survey, which polled a total of 1,500 registered voters in late September, found that policy ideas that prioritize the collective working class over a handful of billionaires have huge support among Democrat, Republican, and independent voters.
