We knew this was coming: When state Sen. Scott Wiener is in a close race, he immediately uses negative, inaccurate ads to attack his opponent.
We also knew AI would make an appearance in local politics, and in this race.
It started today, when Wiener’s campaign, backed by Big Tech including Anthropic, used the Claude AI tool to set up a fake site claiming to be a chance to chat with Sup. Connie Chan.
It’s patently fake and pretty ridiculous. I spent some time on it today, and all it does is try to portray Chan as someone who opposes housing and transit and police. That’s going to be Wiener’s theme: Chan is the candidate of “no.”
There are, of course, and have for decades been things the SF voters and sometimes the supervisors have opposed, from the Vietnam War to building a freeway through Golden Gate Park to giving Tasers to the cops to the genocide in Gaza to projects that would devastate working-class neighborhoods. It would have been nice if the supes had said “no” to the redevelopment of the Western Addition and the demolition of the I-Hotel.
Since Uber seems to have a serious problem with rape, it might have made sense for the supes to say No to a rideshare platform that didn’t properly screen its drivers. Since Airbnb resulted in thousands of evictions, made the housing crisis much worse, and tried to stiff the city for millions of dollars in taxes, it might have made sense for the supes to say No to illegal hotel rooms.
People around the country today are saying No to data centers, and it might not be a bad thing for the supes to say No to building one at the Cow Palace.
Government regulation is, at times, about saying No—no to unsafe drugs, unsafe food, unsafe banking practices, illegal wars, racist toxic waste dumping, illegal evictions ….
In other words: Not every new tech idea, not everything a developer or a politician comes up with, is a good idea. The history of the US environmental movement, which I wrote a book about, is a story of people saying No—and the world is much better because of it.
Sometimes, going slow is better for long-term progress than doing what Big Tech likes, which is moving fast and breaking things and asking forgiveness not permission—and leaving tenants and workers and communities devastated in their wake.
In the Trump Era, I think many Democrats would agree they need to resist what the right wing calls “progress.” That means saying No.
Wiener’s efforts to deregulate housing have so far failed—in part because of interest rates and developer profits, but largely because allowing more supply of luxury housing doesn’t lead to lower prices.
But Wiener’s communications team has clearly decided that they can attack Chan as anti-progress, and the chatbot is an example of that. I gave it a few prompts with actual questions about actual issues, and the Chan campaign did the same, and it always comes back to the same answer.
The whole idea of a male candidate putting words in a woman’s mouth is—and I don’t say this lightly—pretty sexist. Some of the answers—and I don’t say this lightly—are pretty racist.
In one answer, the chatbot says that Chan’s accent (she was born in Hong Kong, grew up in Taiwan and moved to the US at 13) is “so thick I can’t understand myself.”
That’s pretty seriously fucked up, by any standard. So far, other than one story on SFGATE, none of the news media are calling out Wiener on this. The local Democratic Party establishment isn’t calling out Wiener.
I sent this email to the Wiener campaign:
Hi, I gather the campaign is trying to say Connie Chan is the candidate of No. Would Scott Wiener have supported a freeway through Golden Gate Park? That was stopped by a community saying No.
Of course, I got no response.
Ian Krager, a Chan campaign spokesperson, told me:
If there was ever any doubt that Scott Wiener is bought and paid for by Big AI, he’s not even trying to hide it anymore. We know Wiener is desperate for attention, but it’s never a good idea for a man to put words in a woman’s mouth—especially when they are falsities fraught with racist and sexist undertones.
Let’s look at some of the AI answers to real questions:
That’s just wrong, and an inaccurate representation of her record.
Clearly, an issue Wiener doesn’t want to discuss.
Like, Trump “birther” stuff? Seriously? In San Francisco?
I’m surprised there hasn’t been more reaction.
For the record: My adult, independent daughter works on the Connie Chan for Congress campaign.
