Some high-profile AI investors are now championing former President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign — they see him as someone who understands their thirst for disruption, and a welcome pro-business contrast to the more cautious approach the Biden-Harris administration has been taking. But what would voters actually want, if Trump won? The Artificial Intelligence Polling Institute asked nearly 1,000 respondents last week, sharing the results exclusively with Digital Future Daily. The online poll asked them to rate the sometimes conflicting views that Trump allies and the man himself have expressed on AI. What they found might give pause to open-source acolytes and out-there accelerationists alike — and, perhaps unexpectedly, to the Republicans who are ready to line up behind Trump’s desire to repeal President Joe Biden’s sweeping AI agenda. Those who responded to the poll, while often conflicted, have serious concerns about the safety of the technology itself. That’s a top Biden-Harris priority that Trump has been downplaying. They’re also majorly worried about keeping the most advanced forms of AI out of the Chinese government’s hands, which seems like a more potentially bipartisan political project. Asked whether Trump in a second term should prioritize keeping the U.S. ahead of China on AI or keeping Americans safe from it, they prioritized safety by a margin of 15 points. But when asked a slightly different version of the question that presented the argument as a choice between more-secure models that protect against Chinese competition, and less-secure models that might protect free speech — the latter a priority articulated by vice presidential candidate JD Vance) — they clearly worried much more about China. In fact they favored keeping advanced AI from China by a much larger margin of 43 points in that case, suggesting that the “free speech” arguments for open-source AI on the cultural right aren’t widely shared. Presented with a spectrum of policy paths for a second Trump administration on AI that spans “as strict as possible,” “remove barriers…. But add regulations to ensure AI that is built is safe,” and “Remove all regulations on AI,” 29 percent of respondents favored the strictest measures and 38 percent favored the middle way, with only 4 percent favoring unrestricted development. (A large group — 29 percent — were “not sure.”) As political junkies might be aware, Donald Trump is… something of a polarizing partisan figure. On AI, however, he doesn’t seem to be playing into any kind of cosmic split in American opinion. In fact the poll shows relatively little daylight between Democrat and Republican respondents on what they want from Trump in at least some respects: An even 48 percent of both Trump and Biden’s voters favored protecting Americans from AI harms over beating China. (They differed modestly on the question about AI and free expression, with a slightly larger number of Democrats responding that they were “not sure” what the U.S. should do in that scenario.) And when it comes to the relative aggression of a potential AI regulation regime, once again, the two camps differed less than one might think: 30 percent of Biden voters and 31 percent of Trump voters favored the strictest approach; 35 percent of Biden voters and 44 percent of Trump voters favored the middle way. Notably, almost nobody wanted to see regulations eliminated entirely (a mere 5 percent of Biden and 3 percent of Trump voters). Republicans were significantly more likely than Democrats to favor repealing the Biden Administration’s AI executive order, by a margin of 20 points — but less likely than one might think. Only 43 percent favored such a move. The poll also tackled an AI-adjacent issue that has become a key GOP talking point: AI’s thirst for energy. Trump recently suggested that Biden-era environmental regulations would stymie the technology’s development. A mere 33 percent of Trump voters agreed that “regulations should be eased on power generation” for AI, with 37 percent opposing such a move and 30 percent saying they weren’t sure. (They also showed lackluster support for Vance’s beliefs about open source as a solution to alleged political bias, with only 31 percent agreeing with him.)
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