Many Republicans have been turned off from “the AI safety movement” because they see it as a progressive cultural cause, or another effort at “big tech censorship.” And right now, they are not wholly wrong. AI safety and risk management “guidance” from the administration, and some proposed and enacted state laws, really do push a progressive cultural agenda on AI. That’s what happens when you make everything about everything else.

It will take effort, statesmanship, and, probably, compromise to achieve anything like the outcome I’m describing. But the political dynamics under a Republican administration permit focused work on major AI risks in a way that they simply do not under a Democratic administration. Whether the AI safety movement, which is largely mood affiliated with the left, can seize that opportunity is another question altogether. Can they forge narrow and tactical alliances on specific issues? Or is everything about everything to them, too?