NYC DSA post on AI alarmism draws 25,000 likes, splits left

The Instagram post was authored by the NYC DSA's Tech Action Working Group, which focuses on tech regulation for the chapter, and it came two days after Jacob Coxon, a researcher who had recently quit Anthropic, sounded the alarm about AI potentially bringing about the end of humanity. Alan Dang of Tech Action tells WIRED that socialists don't trust corporations to craft their own regulations, while Alexander McCoy argues that frontier AI abilities are true and increasing in power. Senator Bernie Sanders has enthusiastically taken up AI safety, and his data center moratorium bill released in March explicitly linked pausing construction with protecting the future of humanity. That positioning has put him in unusual alliances, including with Steve Bannon, and inspired statements from left-wing candidates. AI researcher Timnit Gebru has accused Sanders and others of taking cues from what she calls doomsday eugenicist cults, and one NYC DSA member privately asked, 'what happened?' Rumman Chowdhury of Humane Intelligence thinks all the attention AI safety discourse generates ultimately benefits frontier labs, which can point to a regulatory regime when pursuing IPOs. Pragathi Barusubramanian says existential risk doesn't come up at all on the ground, where the concern is that AI and data center companies don't have people's interests at heart. The outcome of this debate hinges on whether the left can agree on which regulations to back, and for whom—voters, candidates, and the companies themselves—the stakes look different.