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.
A law to ban surprise medical bills, for example, has support from 90 percent of respondents, while a new federal wealth tax on Americans with a net worth of over $1 billion has support from 61 percent of participants. Legislation mandating health insurance companies cover all services and medicine prescribed by doctor has support from 88 percent, and 87 percent want to cap the maximum price of prescription drugs. A further 79 percent are in favor of limiting credit card interest rates to 10 percent.
“We love to think about the world as conservative and liberal,” Democratic pollster John Anzalone told the WSJ. “Maybe we should start thinking about the world as: populism is a dominant ideology in both the Democratic and Republican” voting blocs.
None of these legislative proposals are likely to reverse the fortunes of America’s working class on their own. But given the overwhelming support from the vast majority of voters, it’s clear the average Joe is hurting in ways that are increasingly difficult to separate from the vast wealth accumulated by the tech elite.
That said, there’s a simple explanation for the explosive poll results: our ideas are shaped by our material reality, which for working Americans has become increasingly fraught in so many ways it’s impossible to keep track. As Anzalone puts it, “when you feel like you can’t buy a home, or you feel like you can’t get ahead, you will all of a sudden be attracted to policies you never thought you would be attracted to.”
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