Consider political giving for AI safety

AI policy, and the unique advantages of individual donors

A guest post by Erin Braid

On June 25, U.S. Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi opened a Congressional committee meeting by talking about AGI.

“Basically,” Krishnamoorthi’s opening statement explained, “it's AI that meets or exceeds human capabilities and can take action without human intervention. […] Whether it's American AI or Chinese AI, it should not be released until we know it's safe. That's why I'm working on a new bill—the AGI Safety Act—that will require AGI to be aligned with human values and require it to comply with laws that apply to humans.”

This “AGI Safety Act” has not been formally introduced, and we don’t know what it might ultimately contain. But Krishnamoorthi’s statement, among others, clearly shows that some members of Congress are open to talking about and legislating on AI safety. This could be a key moment for AI policy, and so it might also be a key moment for donors who want to support AI policy orgs, especially orgs that work on building relationships with members of Congress. In this post, I want to explain why individual donors are especially important to those orgs, and why large foundations can’t just fund all of the policy work that they think is important. If you are an American citizen interested in donating thousands or tens of thousands of dollars towards AI policy and governance, this opportunity might be for you! (The rest of us will just get a little insight into American politics and policy.)

The fundraising grind

Members of Congress have full schedules of committee hearings, briefings, floor votes, meetings with their constituents, meetings with other Congresspeople, etc, but their schedules are also shockingly full of fundraising. It’s been reported that sitting members of Congress spend as much as half of their work time fundraising. They’re on the phone for hours, going down long lists of potential supporters, calling them one after another to ask for donations. A 2016 CBS segment got some horrifying quotes from sitting Representatives:

“[Before 2010] I'd have to put in about an hour, maybe an hour and a half, at most, two hours a day into fundraising. And that's the way it went until 2010, when Citizens United was enacted. At that point, everything changed. And I had to increase that to two, three, sometimes four hours a day, depending on what was happening in the schedule.” - Rep. Steve Israel.

“Both parties have told newly elected members of the Congress that they should spend 30 hours a week in the Republican and Democratic call centers across the street from the Congress, dialing for dollars.” - Rep. Rick Nolan.

As Rep. Nolan’s quote suggests, this extreme fundraising schedule isn’t purely an individual decision for each politician. Members of Congress are expected to raise large sums of money for their parties, not just their own campaigns. And these “party dues” are higher if you are on the most powerful legislative committees – so, in practice, you won’t be assigned to the most powerful legislative committees unless you can raise significant amounts.

This all means that if you give money to a politician’s campaign, alongside whatever effect you may have on their (re-)election odds, you can save them a lot of time and grief, and even enable them to actually serve in their current elected office.

Not all dollars are created equal

Some donation dollars are much more useful to a candidate than others. Under the current laws governing federal elections, a donor can give a maximum of $3,500 per election directly to a candidate’s campaign. (State-level elections have different rules in each state, but 38 of the 50 states also have this kind of donation limit.) Political Action Committees (PACs) can give a bit more: a qualifying PAC can contribute up to $5,000 per election. Other entities, like corporations and 501(c)(3) nonprofits, can’t contribute to campaigns or to PACs at all.

These legally-limited contributions, from individuals and PACs directly to a campaign, are the most valuable form of support: the highly desirable “hard dollars”. Candidates are allowed to use this money for any legitimate campaign expense. Most importantly, they can run ads to reach and convince voters.

Famously, “super PACs” can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money. However, the candidates themselves don’t control this kind of spending. By law, candidates and their campaigns can’t be involved in the creation of a super PAC’s messages in any way. So from a politician’s or a party’s perspective, while they appreciate super PAC spending on their behalf, they would definitely prefer “hard dollars” that they can use to run their own ads with their own messages.

This means that a new donor who can give, say, $3,000, is much more valuable to a politician than an additional $3,000 from someone who has already given significant amounts. This in turn opens up an opportunity for smaller donors to collectively have an impact that’s not available to a single large donor. Networks of small donors, who care about an issue and are willing to coordinate, can be very influential.

The power of coordination

Donors who are more willing to coordinate will have an easier time building relationships with politicians and leading the discussion on a policy issue. For example, with no coordination, individual donors might each independently contribute to a campaign, and each independently tell the candidate that issue X is important to them. This approach leaves it up to the candidate and their team to proactively notice that many different voters and donors care about X; then, even if they do notice, there will be no obvious way to learn more about X and discuss possible next steps. But if donors work together, they can collectively host X-themed fundraisers; they can unite behind specific experts and spokespeople, who can then build ongoing relationships with politicians; they can pursue a strategic mix of supporting new candidates who would champion issue X if elected, and also advocating for issue X with more established politicians.

Examples of successful donor networks:

• OutGiving and the Gill Action Fund. The Gill Action Fund was founded in 2005 by Tim Gill to advocate for marriage equality and related LGBT issues. OutGiving, the network of LGBT and allied donors that Gill had founded a decade earlier, partnered with the Action Fund to direct their individual donations to pro-equality candidates and ballot measures. After same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide in 2015, and with a majority of Americans supporting marriage equality, the Gill Action Fund wound down its operations, and the OutGiving network moved away from direct political donations.

• The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, is a pro-Israel lobbying organization. It has a large pool of affiliated donors, including “club members” who commit to contributing at least $1,800 per year. These contributions are bundled and directed to candidates across the country. Until 2020, AIPAC hosted a large annual policy conference; past speakers include Presidents Trump, Biden, Obama, and Bush. AIPAC’s policy positions have been influential in Congress for decades.

• EMILYs List is a PAC that aims to elect pro-choice Democratic women to office. Each election cycle, the organization endorses candidates in local, state, and federal races across the country. Affiliated donors can support these candidates by giving to EMILYs List, which bundles the contributions and sends them to the campaigns. EMILYs List also recruits and trains potential candidates, and runs an affiliated super PAC called Women Vote.

Giving opportunities

Concretely, I know of two AI policy orgs that would benefit from a network of individual donors concerned about AI risk. The AI Policy Network (AIPN) advocates for policies to help the United States prepare for rapid advances in AI capabilities, focusing on national security and on maintaining human control of AI. Americans for Responsible Innovation (ARI) advocates for policies in the public interest on a range of AI issues, including current harms (e.g. nonconsensual deepfakes), national security (e.g. enforcing export controls), and emerging risks (misuse and misalignment).

You can reach out to these orgs if you are interested in supporting their work or hearing about upcoming donation opportunities. Note that AIPN and ARI are both 501(c)(4) nonprofits, so donations to them, like donations to political campaigns, are not tax-deductible. ARI also has a 501(c)(3) sister organization, the Center for Responsible Innovation, which is recommended by Founders Pledge.

Some cautionary notes

When thinking about whether you should make some of your donations as part of an AI policy donor network, consider:

• Some people who work on AI safety have worried that getting involved in politics will result in the idea of AI risk becoming (ahem) politicized. In particular, you might worry that AI safety will become associated with one party, and then the other party will be negatively polarized against the idea.

• On the flip side, if a donor network works with politicians all across the political spectrum, that will probably include supporting politicians that you, personally, strongly disagree with on other issues. You may not be willing to do that! (You can still participate in a donor network even if you're not willing to support all the politicians they might work with, but the more politicians you put in that category, the less valuable your participation in the network becomes.)

• Remember that the point of building relationships with politicians, talking to them about AI risks, and electing more people who care about this issue, is ultimately to write and enact helpful legislation. I would only recommend being part of an AI policy donor network if you agree that there are specific policy asks that would mitigate AI risks.