Big AI has a problem on the right. It starts in Florida.

Florida Gov.

Ron DeSantis speaks during a press conference on June 6, 2023 in Wildwood, Florida. | Paul Hennessy/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images If President Donald Trump had his way, the Republican Party would be top-to-bottom the party of AI — or, in his preferred branding, “super intelligence.” But down in the very state where Trump has his “ winter White House ,” two Republicans have put forth a very different vision for the party’s future — and have been far more eager to take on the artificial intelligence industry.

Key takeaways Gov.

Ron DeSantis and his attorney general, James Uthmeier, have become vocal critics of the AI industry over the past year, warning of the technology’s dangers to children and to humanity as a whole.

This sets them apart from Trump, who has championed the industry and downplayed its dangers.

DeSantis tried to pass an “AI bill of rights” with child safety restrictions, but his effort was foiled by other Florida Republicans with close White House ties.

Uthmeier has filed a wide-ranging lawsuit against OpenAI and the company’s CEO, Sam Altman.

The two are betting that public backlash against AI will grow deeper, including among Republicans — and they’re hoping they’ll be able to steer the party in a post-Trump world.

Most notable is the term-limited Gov.

Ron DeSantis, who devoted much of his final year in office to a failed effort to pass an “AI bill of rights,” which would have imposed tougher restrictions regarding child safety and other topics.

He’s warned that AI could “set off an age of darkness and deceit,” blasted “tech oligarchs” for putting people at risk, and called Anthropic “very creepy” for exploring whether AI could be conscious.

“He clearly understands what the risks are, and I find he’s also very good at calling bullshit on disingenuous arguments from the Silicon Valley lobby,” Max Tegmark, an MIT physicist who co-founded the Future of Life Institute, an AI safety nonprofit, told me. (DeSantis hosted Tegmark at two events in Florida this year.) The other is DeSantis’s handpicked attorney general, James Uthmeier, a longtime close ally who is now trying to win the AG’s office in his own right — and who filed a high-profile lawsuit against OpenAI in June.

Last week, Uthmeier asked the judge in the case to block OpenAI from developing new models unless they had “independent third-party guardrails and approval.” “The danger of these AI systems is real and growing,” Forrest Saunders, a spokesperson for Uthmeier, told me.