Artificial intelligence is brought to you by these Florida lobbyists and political associations

Artificial intelligence might one day replace humanity, lead us to a post-scarcity utopia, or just turn into a more annoying version of Clippy. And who knows, maybe Clippy will get a high-tech comeback with access to nuclear launch codes.

For now, though, AI still needs lobbyists.

And Florida’s political scene is already full of them.

Companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and xAI are all shaping the global AI race. They have quietly built strong teams in Tallahassee as lawmakers deal with procurement rules, datacenter growth, education policy, energy needs, and even the question of whether machines might one day see humans as unnecessary middle managers.

OpenAI — the company that launched a thousand panicked LinkedIn posts and at least three divorces via ChatGPT — is represented in Florida by The Advocacy Partners’ Sarah Suskey and Slater Bayliss, alongside The Southern Group team of Brian Bautista, Brian McManus, Chris Dudley, and Clark Smith.

Anthropic, which created Claude and is known for its strong focus on AI safety, has hired Capital City Consulting. Their team includes co-founder Nick Iarossi, Caroline Frasier, Chris Schoonover, and Kaley Flynn.

Then there’s Elon Musk’s xAI, which made Grok and shows that every billionaire eventually wants a chatbot based on their own online posts. Add in Tesla, and Musk is now closer than anyone to creating a real-life Knight Rider universe. Hopefully, the result is more like KITT or Red Dwarf’s Holly, and less like HAL 9000 on a wild streak.

In Florida, xAI is represented by Jeff Sharkey of Capitol Alliance Group, along with Taylor Biehl, who have both worked with Musk’s companies for a long time.

Naturally, the hyperscalers arrived too.

Google — inventor of the transformer architecture that made the current AI boom possible and owner of enough of the internet to make William Gibson retroactively uncomfortable — fields one of the deepest Tallahassee…

Source