If the pro-AI people wanted to win here then they should have conducted themselves in a way that was consistent with them winning - IE not tying themselves to a super unpopular president so tightly or not engaging in such ham-fisted tactics (like how Jensen has personally called elected officials to get individual Republican staffers in their 20's fired for being critical of chip exports to China) or prioritizing getting the president's loyalty over aligning with the public - all the VC's falling over themselves to side with Trump and 10% of the public during the DOW-Anthropic fight against 90% of the public is a good example. The reality is that Jensen and Karp and A16z all calculated that if they paid Trump and his family a lot of money then they did not have to worry about literally any other stakeholders. But now Trump is quite unpopular and is three months away from being a lame duck - they're on an island on their own and I think it won't go well for them.

Just to update this chart: 1) AI salience has increased dramatically in the past week - increasing as much in the last week as the previous year combined 2) 80% of voters think it's either very or somewhat likely that AI will cause widespread job loss in the five to ten years 3) 64% of voters think it's either very or somewhat likely that AI could pose a threat to humanity's survival 4) Large bipartisan majorities back immediate government action on AI even when primed about risk from China