The political fight over AI regulation is not about how strict the rules should be, but about which parts of society the government should control.
April 25, 2026
Original Paper
Parties Disagree Over What to Regulate in Artificial Intelligence, Not How Strictly
SSRN · 6630500
The Takeaway
Democrats and Republicans do not disagree on the intensity of AI oversight. Instead, they focus their regulatory efforts on different domains, such as the private sector versus education or criminal justice. This means the culture war is being mapped onto technology as each party tries to protect its own interests. We often assume that polarization is a battle between big and small government. In the world of AI, both sides want the government to step in, they just want it to target different things. The future of tech law will be determined by which party can successfully label their targets as risky.
From the abstract
When a novel technology becomes politically salient, what determines how parties divide? We argue that early-stage policy formation is inherently multidimensional: parties differentiate first over which problems to regulate rather than how much. Using 1,793 AI bills introduced in U.S. state legislatures (2019-2025), we show that partisan differences operate primarily through domain selection-where to regulate-rather than regulatory intensity. Democrats disproportionately target private-sector go