You should precise in which country, you would be surprise for how many country abortion is just not a debate, which made AI already a bigger political discussion there.

OP is American, so presumably the context is taken to be either global or in America

@GP it’s from an ACX prediction where Scott Alexander was specifically talking about US politics, but also the market is tagged with US politics

Surprised this is trading so high. Abortion is a topic where society is divided for and against, where politicians and parties need to voice an official position, where religions have stances based on scripture, and which has been through the Supreme Court at various times. Abortion is a matter of life and death that fundamentally affects the course of people’s lives. AI is a live issue and a huge one but it still none of those things.

@jrmygrdn one reason is specific empirical evidence referenced in various of this market’s comments

@jrmygrdn Although this is true the implications of its wide spread adoption with limited regulation are massive. For one if the generative ai continues to improve it will become very difficult to continue to easily identify real unadulterated media from generated media without the aid of tools to identify the AI generation. But beyond on this without safeguards in place or secondary failsafe laws, you risk a reality where a bottle neck occurs within the private sector of jobs that are actually able to be automated ( not the le epic take of AI will take all jobs ) thus causing job loss, and then no way to actually stop the ramifications of said job loss. Now that could be amended via legislation on a state level in which states dictate a percentage of human workforce per organization but the idea that the regulation would be sweeping within every state with the current admin is a bit rich. It will also effect the ability to be economically mobile at least in the states, No job for unskilled workers = no money for them, no money = no food = well you get the rest. It wouldn't be every person or even a majority of people but left unchecked could be devastating. Additionally, this doesn't even get into the considerations of the cybersecurity angle and the potential implications for things like our power grids, water supply, internet and private information.

Abortion is just overly politicized thus talked about more, and in reality has much narrower implications for the everyday person. Especially with the increase in people not having kids in general. If abortion is made legal then that status quo returns, if its made illegal then there will be outrage and people will die, but people will still be able to eat, and provide for their famililes. If AI is allowed to encrouch unrestricted then it could effect the ability to generate income for unskilled and some skilled workers.

@goober That’s all true but we still don’t see pro-AI or anti-AI politicians and not even any regulation being proposed or debated. Even when AI companies do blatantly illegal stuff (copyright theft, making child porn) nothing at all seems to happen. Given all that I don’t expect much pro-AI or anti-AI lobbying money being spent, whereas abortion has a constant baseline of that, albeit reduced a lot by reversion to the states.

@jrmygrdn It depends on your state, there is actually politcians who are talking about it in fact thats why trump explicitly said that state regulations will be ignored in order to advanced Ai. Additionally there is already legislation on Ai such as in the case of deepfake porn, weather its as enforced as it should be is a different question, but it is being ruled on. Additionally there is lobbying on it as of november Politico reported a $150 million lobbying fued over Ai. As of the start of 2023 over 323 lobbyists were hired directly for lobbying Ai related issues. This number jumped by over 188% reaching 931 lobbyists by the end of 2023. This was now, 3 years ago, i'm sure the number of Ai lobbyists is in the thousands now. Additionally, there are anti Ai groups like PauseAi or Transparency Coalition.

The perception that this isn't being covered is because of few things. One, is its a brand new issue, and the idea that its even in conversation between us here within the same conversation as abortion which has been a 50-60 year polticized issue kind of shows that this issue is gaining steam. The young age of the issue is also why lobbying is just starting. In reality, for how long generative and conversational Ai has been relevant, which in its current capacity is about 5 years, its pretty obvious this will probably be as much of an issue if not more.

I think right now AI is a bigger political issue than abortion, in terms of getting "talked about". Mostly because abortion stopped being talked about, after it went back to the states. So now the question is, will abortion see a resurgence? Or will AI fade in the next 2 years? I feel like the novelty of AI is already wearing off with the public. AI will continue to progress, but as simply another "normal technology", laypeople will lose interest. I don't know if they will lose interest in time for this market.

@pietrokc and there’s also the possibility AI starts looking like it isn’t a normal tech by 2028, e.g. due to unemployment effects

@DavidHiggs Lots of technologies have eliminated jobs. Maybe most, for some reasonable definition of technology? So I don't think unemployment effects would make AI not a normal technology. In 1890 ~half of Americans were farmers. By 1920, thanks to mechanization, it was ~20%.

@pietrokc right the abnormal part would be the speed/scale being faster/larger than previous technologies

@pietrokc sure, but those changes got "talked about" quite a lot, and so will those due to AI. Even while it's still "normal" in your sense

@DavidHiggs Yes that could happen but it is a priori unlikely. Even if we assume AI is very powerful, the problems it has to solve are much harder than "move a big plow through a field". I don't see any reason to expect it to drive unemployment faster than farm machinery.

@AhronMaline I don't know what happened historically in terms of political upheaval over farm machinery. If you have sources I'd be interested to read them. But tbh I'm skeptical that AI will drive substantial job losses all that quickly. Then again, there could be job losses that happen for normal business cycle reasons, but get blamed on AI. That could make it "talked about".

Big limit order up for yes at 75%

https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/03/pi_2025.04.03_us-public-and-ai-experts_topline.pdf

@DanW interesting but doesn’t seem to offer any obvious updates to this market

https://manifold.markets/JonathanBarankin/ai-more-important-to-voters-than-ab?r=Sm9uYXRoYW5CYXJhbmtpbg

I created a similar market that will be based on the polling of voters rather than "vibes".

Wouldn't polls on which issues voters feel are most important be a more accurate, and objective metric?

@JonathanBarankin you're free to make a similiar market with that criteria.

@JonathanBarankin if you’re going for just more objectivity (on what this market is about), it would be some combo of issue importance to voters and money spent trying to influence politics, which are both measurable (and both have methodological ambiguity).

@DavidHiggs I don't think that's necessarily a good argument, just because that's indirect and difficult to tell, does the 600 million spent by silicon valley on lobbying last year mean tech was a huge a political issue, or does it just mean they like low taxes and low regulations more broadly. When I hear huge political issue, I'm thinking about something someone is actually deciding their vote on.

@Yakushi12345 Done!

Hold the line! Do not retreat. We can't let this get past 80%.

A brave whale needs to set this probability right.