“Our fundamental belief here is that people still do have the power to stop this autocratic takeover of the Trump administration and the tech sector,” Thomas told the NYT.

Guardrails positions itself as a populist political movement that runs on small donations from people in the trenches of the AI boom. The PAC has about $5 million at its disposal today and plans to raise $15 million this cycle — small potatoes compared to deep-pocketed adversaries like Leading the Future, which has more than $100 million from tech leaders like OpenAI president Greg Brockman.

Guardrails will buy ads to support Alex Bores, a New York congressional candidate who became Leading the Future’s first target and is running in the primaries next week. On Thursday, Bores shared an ad featuring the parents of Adam Raine, the teenager who died by suicide after months of prolonged conversations with ChatGPT.

Bores is also receiving support from another pro-legislation super PAC, Public First Action, which has backing from Anthropic.