Politics and the Future

Ben Horowitz

As software has eaten the world, it has become integral to every industry and nearly every endeavor in our society. As a result, the governments around the world have become increasingly interested in the implications and how they might regulate the technology.

As we’ve seen with Internet regulation in the 1990s, high quality regulation can enable an industry to thrive while protecting consumers. However, as we’ve seen with the regulation of nuclear power, misguided and politicized regulation can kill an industry and greatly exacerbate problems like climate change. 

We believe that advancing technology is critical for humanity’s future, so we will, for the first time, get involved with politics by supporting candidates who align with our vision and values specifically for technology. 

While “Big Tech” is well represented in Washington D.C., their interests are often at odds with a positive technological future as they are more interested in regulatory capture and preserving their monopolies. As a result, technology startups need a voice.

We are non-partisan, one issue voters: If a candidate supports an optimistic technology-enabled future, we are for them. If they want to choke off important technologies, we are against them. 

Specifically, we believe:

  • America’s best days are ahead if we retain our global technology leadership. The primary thing that can undermine that is misguided regulatory policy.
  • Artificial Intelligence has the potential to uplift all of humanity to an unprecedented quality of living and must not be choked off in its infancy. We can do this by requiring that AI behaves within the law and rules of our society without regulating math, FLOPs, methods of R&D, and other misguided ideas.
  • Decentralized technologies from the blockchain/crypto/web3 ecosystem will create a fairer, more inclusive economy than the centralized, monopoly-enabling technologies of web 2 and the industrial-era financial system. Still, we need clear regulation to eliminate bad actors exploiting the technology for nefarious purposes.
  • We are entering the golden era of biological research. AI is maturing at a time when life sciences and healthcare are also transforming into data-driven disciplines, with both industries increasingly driven by AI and engineering, with its power and opportunity to fundamentally change how we diagnose, treat, and manage disease and deliver health. However our regulatory regime and processes are built based on a model of crude industrial revolution era technologies. As a result, we risk harming far more people than we save with our “safety” measures.

Every penny we donate will go to support like-minded candidates and oppose candidates who aim to kill America’s advanced technological future.

Contributor

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