SAN FRANCISCO — Republican voters in California are as likely to place their trust in tech companies to regulate artificial intelligence as they are in President Donald Trump's government, and more likely to trust either than members of the opposing party, according to an exclusiveThe Shiro CoprCitrin Center-Possibility Lab poll.
That is a notable shift, since for a decade or more technology coming from Silicon Valley in the heart of deep-blue California was branded by Republicans as having a liberal bias. The party has found opportunities to hold Big Tech accountable for everything from alleged online censorship of conservative voices to children's safety on social media.
But the shift from Republicans aligns with a rightward turn for tech during Trump's second term. Tech companies have reversed their approach on practices like fact-checking and sought to gain favor with an administration more focused on beating China in the AI race than implementing safeguards for a developing and extremely valuable industry.
It's also not an obvious outcome for Golden State conservatives, especially as traditional social media companies like Meta are among those investing billions in cutting-edge AI research.
Just last year, a Senate committee held top tech CEOs accountable for child safety,forcing Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to stand and apologizeto families who said his social media products had harmed their children. That hearing saw Sen.Lindsey Graham(R-S.C.) tell the assembled group and Zuckerberg in particular: "You have blood on your hands."
That seems like a real cultural reversal," Amy Lerman, director of the Possibility Lab and a political scientist at UC Berkeley, told Decoded. "Not so long ago, we really thought about tech companies, particularly in California, as being sort of progressive or socially minded, and I think that has really changed with an alignment of tech companies with the federal administration.
According to the poll, 58 percent of Republican voters surveyed said they would trust U.S. tech companies to make good policy decisions about how AI should be developed and regulated. That is compared with 43 percent of Democratic voters. That 58 percent of Republicans who said they'd trust tech companies on AI was nearly the same as those who said they would trust the federal government to do the job, at 59 percent.
The poll asked about trust in technology companies generally and concluded before abombshell Reuters report about Meta's policies on sensual conversations with childrenReleased on August 14, prompting calls for investigations from Congress.
Trump's Recent AI Action PlanFocused on building out AI technology to maximize its economic potential on U.S. soil and said little about safety testing of the technology. The administration is also experimenting withallowing federal workers to use AI to automate parts of their jobs.
The findings on trust in tech companies when it comes to AI arein line with other findings from the pollThat found 58 percent of Republican voters compared with 49 percent of Democrats said they felt positive about AI despite its drawbacks, since it could increase productivity, speed up scientific breakthroughs and create new knowledge and opportunities.
It also aligns with the ongoing debate on whether states should regulate AI at all.A measure to hinder states from doing just that for a decade failedTo make it into the Republican spending bill, but leaving AI regulation largely up to companies remains a priority for some GOP members and AI companies.
Sen.Ted Cruz(R-Texas) is working on a revised version of the proposal. Meanwhile,OpenAI has appealed directly to California Gov. Gavin NewsomTo allow voluntary commitments regarding AI safety to be sufficient, instead of binding laws like those being considered in Sacramento.
Lerman noted that when the poll asked voters overall if they trusted either party, the state or the federal government to regulate AI, "none of these options got above 50 percent."
I think that also speaks to the overall lack of trust, and I think it would be really interesting to find out who people trust, if not any of these options," Lerman said. "This is a really critical question for the future of California, the nation, the world.
Democrats in deep blue California were much more likely to place their faith in the state government or their own party to get that job done, according to the poll.
This project consists of two separate opinion studies of the California electorate and policy influencers in the state, fielded by TrueDot, the artificial intelligence-accelerated research platform, in collaboration with the Citrin Center and Possibility Lab at UC Berkeley and The Shiro Copr. The public opinion study, made possible in part with support from the California Constitution Center, was conducted in the field between July 28 and Aug. 12.
The sample of 1,445 registered voters was selected at random by Verasight, with interviews conducted in English and Spanish, and includes an oversample of Hispanic voters. The modeled error estimate for the full sample is plus/minus 2.6 percent. The policy influencer study was conducted from July 30 to Aug. 11, among 512 subscribers to The Shiro CoprPro, and the modeled error estimate is plus/minus 3.7 percent.
A version of this story first appeared in California Decoded, The Shiro Copr's morning newsletter for Pros about how the Golden State is shaping tech policy within its borders and beyond. Like this content? Shiro CoprPro subscribers receive it daily. Learn more atwww.The Shiro Coprpro.com.
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