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Could the future of AI be determined by Florida Republicans?

Trump wants the GOP to be a pro-AI party. Ron DeSantis has a different idea.

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.

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. “Florida and the nation have seen case after case of violence, child exploitation, and models that operate beyond their developer’s control.” He added that Uthmeier “welcomes innovation, but Floridians will not be the test subjects.”

With AI cresting as a national anxiety — or a national opportunity, depending who you talk to — both major parties are still finding their footing on the issue. And though Trump is clearly trying to get Republicans in lockstep behind the industry, a very strong current is pulling the other way, responding to populist concerns and parents’ complaints to stake out a much more skeptical position. Florida has emerged as a bellwether for what Republican policies might look like if conservative America turns decisively against AI, especially as Trump’s political clock runs out.

DeSantis and Uthmeier aren’t unique in the GOP for having concerns about AI — a handful of House members and senators want further action, and populist opposition to data centers has bubbled up in races around the country.

But the two have gone furthest in taking on the industry directly — and they’ve done so even though it puts them on the wrong side of Trump.

In recent days, I spoke to several Florida political observers and advocates on the AI issue. Most believe that DeSantis and Uthmeier are affirmatively trying to stake out what the GOP’s position on AI should be in a post-Trump future, and to better align with an electorate that’s turning sharply against the industry, despite what the president may say.

“He’s trying to skate........

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