New Super PAC, Guardrails Alliance, Aims to Rally Tech Workers to Help Limit AI
At an internal OpenAI policy meeting last month, employees urged executives to drop donations one of the company’s founders made to Leading the Future, a super PAC that favors lighter regulation of artificial intelligence and has become a powerful force in the midterm elections.
According to current and former employees who described the meeting as tense but productive, top political figures tried to distance OpenAI from the activities of Leading the Future and the co-founder. But not all OpenAI employees who disagree with the super PAC’s tactics and decisions left feeling safe.
Now, two Democratic operatives are trying to take advantage of the tech industry’s unrest over artificial intelligence and engage a distraught workforce in a political movement. On Thursday, they unveiled a super PAC, the Guardrails Alliance, with support from tech workers, unions and other groups to push back vested interests like Leading the Future. The group is positioning itself as a populist effort in which small-dollar donations from rank-and-file workers will be picked up by financial entities that oppose reining in AI while supporting legislation to protect the technology.
“Our core belief is that the people still have the power to stop this autocratic takeover of the Trump administration and the tech sector,” said Shaunna Thomas, who founded Guardrails with Leah Hunt-Hendrix, referring to how the Trump administration has generally shied away from implementing AI rules.
Guardrails is small compared to Leading the Future, which has a political budget of more than $100 million. Guardrails and its affiliated nonprofit have raised $5 million with a goal of raising $15 million this round.
Cash deployment has begun. Guardrails said it is buying ads for the Democratic primary in New York’s 12th congressional district to support Alex Bores, a former tech worker who wrote AI security regulations. The race is central to the midterm battle over technology, with more than $10 million spent on ads by at least three AI-related super PACs to support or oppose Mr. Bores ahead of Tuesday’s primary. Guardrails plans to air $250,000 worth of ads for him in the final days of the race.
Guardrails comes at a fraught time for the AI industry, which is facing backlash over how the technology could affect jobs, warfare and communities. Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic saw the moment as a referendum on the public’s perception of AI, and corporate executives poured money into various super PACs.
Leading the Future was announced last year, with $50 million pledged by AI investor Andreessen Horowitz and $50 million by Greg Brockman, president of OpenAI, and his wife Anna. Since then, three super PACs have formed in response to Leading the Future, including Guardrails.
In November, a donor group linked to OpenAI rival Anthropic unveiled a super PAC called Public First. In May, Chris Larsen, a tech billionaire, launched a group that spends primarily in the Bores race to specifically oppose OpenAI.
OpenAI declined to comment. (The New York Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, accusing them of infringing news content related to AI systems. OpenAI and Microsoft have denied the claims.)
Ms Thomas and Ms Hunt-Hendrix, founders of Guardrails, come from the left wing of the Democratic Party. Last year, they started a conversation with groups that argued there wasn’t enough conversation about how to protect people from rapidly advancing technology.
Ms. Thomas previously co-founded UltraViolet, a non-profit women’s advocacy group. Ms. Hunt-Hendrix, who straddles the world of left-wing politics and major donors, is the granddaughter of a Texas oil baron and has sought to use her proximity to the wealthy to shift the Democratic Party to the left.
Guardrails said its backers included Chris Hyams, former chief executive of job site Indeed.com; the American Federation of Teachers; American Association of University Professors; and the Working Families Party. David Farhi, a former OpenAI researcher, is also a donor. Guardrails said it was in discussions with more technical staff who were concerned about groups like Leading the Future.
“This is the oldest story in business: You have billionaire CEOs who don’t want any constraints or accountability,” said Mr. Hyams, who left Indeed last year and now teaches the ethics of artificial intelligence in Austin, Texas. “And then you have the rest of us who want to be protected at all costs from the absolutely unbridled generation of wealth.”
OpenAI staff have taken to social media to express concern about Leading the Future and its attacks on Mr Bores. After a tense internal meeting last month, which he previously reported on Transformer, the company published its political blog“We want to be explicit: No outside political group speaks for OpenAI or represents our company’s views.”
Ms. Thomas said she sees Guardrails as a fundamental counterweight to OpenAI.
“It’s not about matching them dollar for dollar, fighting them with money or another group of billionaires,” she said. “What this vehicle is supposed to do is be a political home for people who are concerned about the way the anti-regulatory AI tech sector is trying to manipulate elections.”