AI is transforming politics---and how we understand it

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System Check<br>AI is transforming politics---and how we understand it<br>Claude now automagically tracks political campaign AI usage for me. This and more in this week's System Check.<br>Andy Hall<br>Aug 16, 2026

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AI has been accelerating steadily for a while, but even relative to that baseline, the last several weeks have felt different. Agents are demonstrating shocking capabilities to escape containment, coordinate with one another, and wreak havoc online. New model releases are coming fast and thick. And, closer to home, AI is getting better and better at helping me with my research. Right now is the most exciting period of time around AI and the study of politics I’ve experienced, even more so than the December-January Claude Code explosion.<br>Politicians are adopting AI

As part of my research agenda on building political superintelligence, I am constantly looking for data on how people are using AI for politics. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to try something new: I set up a daily task where Claude Code searches the web for relevant datasets and suggests ways to analyze the data with a Free Systems lens. I’ve been blown away by the ideas Claude has been coming up with. Here’s one.<br>Claude noticed that FEC disbursement data can track how campaigns are spending money on AI. There are a bunch of limitations, here–-expenses under $200 don’t have to be itemized (but can be), campaigns might be paying for AI in ways we don’t see flagged in the data, etc—but the patterns are super interesting even so! Here are the patterns, all suggested by Claude with only minimal iteration by me.<br>Campaigns are embracing AI—especially Claude and ChatGPT

Here are the most “AI-Pilled” campaigns

Cornel West, leading the AI charge! His campaign is using both Descript (a video and audio editing tool) and ChatGPT.

Progressives actually lead the pack in AI usage

AI usage is fairly spread across the ideological spectrum, but interestingly, the most progressive Dems, who are sometimes the most AI-skeptical politicians, actually seem to use it in their campaigns at the highest rate of anyone.

These are fascinating patterns, and I’m extremely impressed that Claude came up with the idea automagically. Back in January, when I had Claude Code extend my vote-by-mail paper, the biggest limitation we flagged was that Claude demonstrated little creativity or insight in developing new analyses. Now, seven months later, Claude (and presumably other models, too) is starting to show signs of being able to propose new research ideas. I’m not sure how much of this improvement comes from the models getting better vs. me getting better at prompting (in particular, the idea to have Claude look for specific datasets seems to have helped get traction), but either way it’s extremely exciting.<br>AI will make political science better

Finding and analyzing good data is not the only way AI is going to improve political science. It can also help us improve how rigorously we understand and interpret ideas and arguments. Here is a good example of this, courtesy of my friend Ben Golub. It turns out, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s new entry on Capitalism is kind of terrible, and AI is very much able to explain why.

Ben Golub@ben_golub

the SEP has a new article on Capitalism, which has some serious errors!

with the help of Refine, let's work our way through some of them

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4:17 AM · Aug 13, 2026 · 230K Views

24 Replies · 134 Reposts · 818 Likes

Obviously, there are lots of things we need to improve about how AI handles information, thinks about politics, etc. But the status quo isn’t perfect, either. Humans make tons of mistakes, are guided by strong ideological biases, and so forth. AI, even imperfect today, is already helping.<br>Giving legislators superintelligence

And just as it helps researchers and campaigners, AI can also help legislators do their actual jobs! I liked this thread from Séb Krier thinking about the use of AI for lawmakers.

Séb Krier@sebkrier

I've read some recent reports of legislators/policymakers using AI to draft bills. I think it's fine to use language models to generate legislation if you properly steer, review, edit it line by line (though that mostly catches errors of commission rather than omission). But what<br>2:42 AM · Aug 15, 2026 · 19.7K Views

17 Replies · 8 Reposts · 124 Likes

I’ve spoken to a number of state and federal legislators about how they use AI. One member of Congress raved to me about how useful AI already is for helping craft legislation. I wrote down some quick thoughts on why I’m so bullish on this:

Andy Hall@ahall_research

Using AI to help craft better legislation is an essential component of building “political superintelligence.”

At a high level, it will help legislators to translate policy goals (“make Roblox safer for kids”) into actual legislation that achieves the goal and doesn’t fall

Séb...