Anthropic is looking to throw its weight around ahead of this November’s midterm elections.
On Wednesday, Anthropic announced it is donating another $20 million to a nonprofit organization tied to three allied super PACs that have already supported Republican and Democratic candidates up and down the ballot. In total, Anthropic is set to spend $40 million to support the organization, Public First Action.
“Our donation to Public First Action is one way in which we’re trying to raise the salience of this urgent policy debate,” Anthropic said in a statement.
Anthropic said its push has only grown more urgent as AI models like Claude Mythos are developed.
“We need policymakers and candidates to put forward measures that mitigate risks,” the company said in the statement.
Unlike super PACs, Public First Action is not required to disclose its donors. In June, the nonprofit said it had raised $80 million to date.
Anthropic said its donation “cannot be used to influence the election of any candidate for federal, state, or local office,” but the nonprofit can and has routed donations to advertising that highlights specific candidates. For example, Public First Action’s first ad was focused on Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s work on AI and child online safety legislation. Blackburn is leaving Congress in hopes of becoming Tennessee’s next governor.
Former Congressman Chris Stewart, a Republican from Utah, and Brad Carson, a Democrat from Oklahoma, cofounded Public First Action. Stewart and Carson have their own allied Super PACs that support Republican and Democratic candidates called “Defending Our Values PAC” and “Jobs and Democracy PAC.”
Public First Action, the Anthropic-backed group, has positioned itself in opposition to Leading the Future, a Super PAC funded by figures such as OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Marc Andreessen, and Ben Horowitz. OpenAI has said that Brockman is operating in his personal capacity in supporting the group, which has raised more than $75 million so far.
While leading AI CEOs have increasingly called for some form of US-led regulation, none have been as outspoken or pushed for as stringent standards as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. In an essay last month, Amodei said the government should create an agency akin to the Federal Aviation Administration, which governs air travel, to impose mandatory testing of certain advanced AI models and to block the release of an AI model if such evaluations raise red flags.
The Trump administration and others in the AI industry have warned against such mandatory reviews.
In May, Amodei separately donated $1 million to Public First, the only Super PAC allied with Public First Action that supports both Republicans and Democrats.
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