Steve Hilton Blames Sam Altman and Dario Amodei for Making America Fear AI

Steve Hilton spent part of an interview on August 11 explaining why California should make it easier to build AI data centers, and part of it blaming two of the industry's most prominent executives for the reason it has become so controversial.

"I think two of the founders in particular, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, have been just a disaster for the reputation of the industry," Hilton said, in a conversation with POLITICO's Sasha Issenberg at Politico’s The California Agenda Sacramento Summit.

"Of course they've had tremendous success in terms of their businesses. But the narrative that they've been spinning for years has been catastrophic for public trust in their own industry."

Hilton, the Republican gubernatorial candidate facing Democrat Xavier Becerra in November, argued that years of warnings from the labs themselves about what artificial intelligence might do to the economy created the public backlash now shaping local fights over where the technology gets built.

"It's because you told them to fear what you're building," he said.

He described resistance to data centers as a stand-in for something larger. "The data center thing is a tangible proxy for a generalized concern about AI," he said, adding that the concern is legitimate and that he takes it seriously.

Hilton said California's hostility to data center construction is pushing projects to Texas and Ohio, and that the state will lose the manufacturing that follows. He said AI-driven automation is going to erode the cost advantage of overseas production and enable a wave of reshoring, and that none of it reaches California without a change in approach.

On regulation, he offered a formulation he said he had used in a speech in San Francisco the night before. "I think we're in danger of both over and under regulating at the same time," he said. He named children's safety and the intersection of AI, creativity and copyright as areas where he holds strong views.

Issenberg noted that Hilton talked more about breaking up large technology companies before he became a candidate, and asked whether it was fair to say voters have heard less of it this year.

"Yeah, I think that's fair," Hilton said.

He said his priority as governor would be reducing regulatory and litigation pressure on business generally, and that the technology sector was not where the emergency is. "The tech sector is doing fine," he said.

He identified entertainment and agriculture as the two industries he would prioritize.

Hilton grounded his argument against one-party rule and cited Fareed Zakaria's program on CNN, which he said laid out a devastating case against California's sixteen years of Democratic control after the June primary.

He ran through the list as he recalled it. The doubling of the budget. The homelessness crisis. The highest taxes and the worst results. The highest cost of living in the country. The highest unemployment rate of the fifty states.

The highest poverty rate. The worst business climate.

Asked who represents the interests of business in Sacramento, Hilton did not name anyone. He cited California's last-place ranking in Chief Executive magazine's annual state survey and said the state is the most overregulated in the country.

"Nobody is really representing the interests of business in Sacramento," he said. "The lobbyists may think they are."

He said litigation risk is an under-discussed part of the problem, and offered two figures without attributing them to a source. Fifty percent of California businesses, he said, are being sued right now. And there is a 90% chance that starting a business in California ends in a lawsuit.

Hilton said housing was the first issue he studied when he moved from media into policy work. He wrote a CEQA reform measure similar to the one going before voters this November and said he was pleased to see it there.

He listed capping developer impact fees and simplifying building regulations as steps he considers broadly acceptable across party lines, and said Democratic primary rivals including Matt Mahan, Katie Porter and Antonio Villaraigosa had found common ground with him on that.

Hilton said he believes in local control and would not override city or county decisions about density.

"Rather than forcing housing into communities that don't want it, let's allow housing to be built in places that do want it," he said.

He anticipated the objection. "I don't call it sprawl," he said. "I call it the California dream."

Issenberg, who edited POLITICO's California ballot measure coverage before becoming its managing editor for enterprise, pressed Hilton twice on his own political history. Hilton ran strategy for British Prime Minister David Cameron, and Issenberg asked what lessons the Conservative Party's 2010 return to power after thirteen years in opposition might hold for a California Republican facing sixteen years of one-party control.

Hilton answered in general terms. A positive vision of the future, he said, and close attention to the cost of living.

With the Conservatives now out of power and at risk of falling to third place, Issenberg asked which faction better represents the British right today.

"I'm afraid I don't really follow it at all," Hilton said. He said his focus is on California.

Hilton predicted his own odds at becoming governor. "I know I'm probably the only person in this room that actually thinks I can win this election," he admitted.