Anthropic's political problem will get worse before it gets better

Anthropicfiled paperwork to go public on Monday, and while its list of business risk factors spans the fanciful (sentient AI) and the mundane (losing its executives), one stands above the rest as a likely source of headaches in the near future: the "evolving and uncertain regulatory and political environment." With an expected IPO around mid-November, and new representatives from the midterms elections to be sworn in in January, the company has a scant few months before it's almost guaranteed to incur even more political headaches. While the current Republican-controlled Congress has not put its political will behind constraining AI companies -- either the technology they produce or the resources they consume -- Americans of both parties are largely agreed in their opposition to data centers and concern about AI displacing jobs. With the executive branch already willing to create difficulty for Anthropic, the predicted "blue wave" of the midterms may result in the company landing on the wrong side of the legislative branch too. Anti-data center sentiment has absolutely been a factor in the midterms.