I posted some links in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ants_everywhere&next.... Not sure how to link to the specific comment id.
Some of the sites have funding and programming.
Politico also reports that "billionaires" (they name a couple) are funding "AI doomsayers" and have created registered lobbying groups: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/23/ai-safety-washingto...
For the record I'm in favor of AI safety and regulating the use of AI. I don't know anything about the particular bills or groups in the Politico article though. But it's clear evidence that people with money are funding speech that pushes back against AI.
The funding and use of campaigns to amplify divisive issues is well known, but I'm not claiming this is a source of anti-AI funding. You may perhaps believe that AI does not count as a divisive issue and so there are no anti-AI campaigns through this funding model. I would find that surprising but I don't know of a source yet that has positively identified such a campaign and its sourcing. There were similar campaigns against American technological domination such as the anti-nuclear movement which received a lot of funding from the pro-nuclear Russian military during the cold war. And the anti-war movement which received a lot of funding from the pro-war Russian military during the Vietnam war. Similarly the US has funded "grass roots" movements abroad.
To be clear I'm not saying the anti-AI movement is similarly funded or organized. But it is clearly a movement (and its adherents acknowledge that) and it clearly has funding (including some from very wealthy donors). And they do all use similar stock phrases and examples and often [0] have very new accounts. Everything in the current paragraph is verifiable.
[0] by often, I mean higher than the base rate topic for HN. I don't mean more than 50% of the time or any other huge probability.
