The Economist.

Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist.

I'm Rosie Bloor.

And I'm Jason Palmer.

Today on the show, divorce rates rise in China and why many Europeans see air conditioning as a moral choice.

But first... In a democratic primary in New York this week, one of the candidates Alex Boris, who's a former computer scientist, was campaigning very hard on the idea of tighter guardrails for AI firms and their technology.

And last year I passed the strongest AI safety bill in the country called the Rays Act.

You had a whole bunch of political action committees backed by big AI firms, spending millions of dollars to try to defeat him.

They're attacking me because they're terrified of what I will do in Congress, which is

past strong AI regulations that protect you and your family and your job and the impact

on the environment.

At the same time, you had a bunch of different AI firms spending also millions of dollars

trying to support him because they think their industry needs

to be better regulated.

Robert Guest is the economist deputy editor.

In the end, Boris lost, but he lost to a conventional candidate who also came out on the day

of his victory and said that he too was going to campaign to regulate AI companies more strictly.

And that's just one example of how AI has become a politically explosive issue in America.

And we're going to see a lot more of this.

If this is such a politically explosive issue, where do the fault lines come?

Well, this is interesting because America at the moment is a country where you cannot normally get Democrats and Republicans to agree on anything at all.

Instinctively, if one party is for it, we're against it.

...