🚨🧵 BREAKING - The "conservative" protest against AI data centers has an anti-ICE NGO organizer, a DSA member, Facebook money.
Other than that, totally grassroots.
Axios ran an "exclusive" Wednesday about a "conservative group" called Humans First planning a nationwide day of protest against AI data centers on July 18. Amy Kremer is chairing it and invoking the Tea Party.
Axios didn't mention that Humans First was incubated by the Center for AI Safety, an organization funded with millions from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Or that its original staff included a Sunrise Movement organizer who sat in at Pelosi's office with AOC and a DSA member who organized for Kamala Harris.
NBC News described CAIS as having founded Humans First "to be a sort of Trojan horse to make AI safety issues more palatable to a conservative political audience."
@ParkerThayer exposed the Action Network backend.
As always, patience as I pull together the thread. 👇
Credit to @ParkerThayer for finding this Action Network backend and inspiring me to dig a bit deeper.
@ParkerThayer The money trail starts at Good Ventures Foundation, the private foundation of Dustin Moskovitz, Facebook co-founder.
Good Ventures is the giving vehicle for Open Philanthropy, an "effective altruism" grantmaker.
@ParkerThayer CAIS also received $6.5 million from Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX Foundation before it collapsed. Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn is on the board.
OpenAI itself gave CAIS a third of a million dollars in 2023. The AI company funding its own safety regulator (and protests).
@ParkerThayer CAIS then incubated Humans First.... provided the startup loan, registered it at the same address (555 Montgomery St, San Francisco), and staffed it.
Yep, a Facebook co-founder's money flows to a "conservative" "grassroots" network.
@ParkerThayer The original Humans First staff. Jeremy Ornstein, "movement strategist" worked with the Sunrise Movement, a major anti-ICE NGO.
@ParkerThayer Alexander McCoy: Co-founder of Common Defense, a progressive veterans organization founded to oppose Trump. Senior Campaigns Director at NextGen America; that's Tom Steyer's organization. DSA member. Organized for Kamala Harris.
@ParkerThayer The conservative face of Humans First. Amy Kremer was ousted from Tea Party Patriots; the group's own co-founders accused her of stealing their email database and website passwords.
Now she chairs a group incubated by Silicon Valley effective altruists using Facebook money.
@ParkerThayer Why are Big Tech and AI people involved with anti-data center protests?
Seems counter-intuitive ... until you view it as a form of regulatory capture.
They want to be the ones calling the shots, not the "wrongthink" like @elonmusk and @kevinolearytv .
@ParkerThayer @elonmusk @kevinolearytv THREAD END.
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