Leading Ai Safety Advocate Likely To Run For President

AI safety advocate and former Oklahoma Rep. Brad Carson is likely to run for president, two people directly familiar with his plans told Decoded by POLITICO.

The “blue dog” Democrat’s interest in potentially running — as well as a push from like-minded donor groups — underscores how AI safety advocates are feeling emboldened after the midterm results in which many Democrats won while campaigning on data center backlash and big tech skepticism.

The former congressmember, who helped build the AI safety movement’s political infrastructure, has become a central voice in the debate over the technology and how much to rein in the companies developing it.

Still, it would be a major long shot: Carson’s Iraq War veteran bona fides and former role as undersecretary of the Army might sound presidential, but he also hasn’t served in Congress since 2005, or in government since 2016. One of the people directly familiar with his plans admitted it would be a “keyhole shot,” while stressing that no final decision has been made.

Carson has been more visible in recent years as the co-founder of the AI safety nonprofit Americans for Responsible Innovation and the co-founder of Public First Action, a nonprofit and super PAC network.

The attempt to convince Carson to run, headed up by large AI safety donor groups and first reported by Puck that donors were urging a run, is a bet that if AI becomes the most important political issue in the country, an advocate would be well-positioned to take advantage.

Still, the fact that many of these groups have connections to safety-minded tech companies like Anthropic might raise issues for voters: POLITICO’s own polling shows that Americans don’t notably distinguish Anthropic from other AI companies or tech money. In fact, more Americans believe that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is a Republican than a Democrat. Public First Action has received $40 million from Anthropic and $1 million personally from Amodei. Carson’s PAC also spent millions of dollars backing Republican candidates in the 2026 midterm cycle.

Many of the people encouraging Carson to run identify as effective altruists — a philosophical movement that uses research to try to measure the most societally beneficial way to help others. They believe AI will become such a transformative issue that some of these natural political points will be overtaken by global AI fears. Some within this community also believe there’s a possibility that the 2028 election won’t occur at all, fearing a chance of AI killing or enslaving humans before November 2028.

That community has increasingly deep pockets due to their longstanding focus on AI, which made many of them wealthy as early AI researchers. And they are increasingly politically involved; a common refrain among some AI safety advocates is that they are “not capital constrained,” meaning they essentially have an unlimited political war chest. Anthropic’s upcoming IPO could also give members of this community even greater funds.

Any credible run from Carson would require much of that cash, given his lower level of name recognition.

“I think he’s going to bring expertise and depth to an issue that is probably — [I’d say] 90% confident — going to be deeply salient to the presidential election,” said the same person with knowledge of Carson’s donor conversations. “The reality is that there is a lot of money in the AI safety community, and of the current field … [Carson] is probably best positioned to take advantage and harness the resources that are there.”

A version of this story first appeared in Decoded by POLITICO, the must-read briefing on the people, power moves, policy battles and market shifts defining what’s next in global technology. Sign up to subscribe to the newsletter and listen to the podcast.