We are all going to die! We must screech the brakes on – let’s see (checks notes) – artificial intelligence. Yeah, that’s it, because AI is sure to destroy all of humanity. Stop me if you have heard this siren song before, the one that says if we don’t take immediate action to have the federal government step in and heavily regulate an invisible threat depicted as catastrophic to the human species – and probably animals, too – the end of civilization will be upon us.
If this analysis appears excessively flippant, it’s because the same sky-is-falling crowd, or their predecessors, have warned us of impending doom for decades now. All that changes is what the fashionable existential threat to humanity is at any given time. It was overpopulation in the 1960s, the impending ice age in the 1970s, Y2K in the 1990s, global warming in the 2000s. And then, of course, came the granddaddy of them all, climate change, which joined the debunked theories of a new ice age and global warming and cleverly incorporated any and all extreme weather events into a more broad-based hysteria. It led to massive overregulation and trillions of taxpayer dollars flushed down a rathole chasing another invisible threat. Ask yourself this: If impending catastrophic climate change is still real, why has the left stopped talking about it?
Free with the Daily Briefing
85EssaysUnravel the Constitution
Hamilton, Madison & Jay’s complete case for America, free and searchable in the Publius Reader.
Free with the Daily Briefing. Unsubscribe anytime.
This time around, the Wall Street Journal somehow saw fit to publish the dire warning of an entry-level 27-year-old AI researcher at Anthropic who proclaims that AI will “kill us all.” Only days have passed since that hysterical prediction, which was then doubled down on by the Anthropic CEO, so it has yet to prove false, which is kind of the point of conspiracy theories – they can never be completely proven or disproven. But who is ready to place their trust in these prophets of doom?
After all, the pattern is always the same. Years go by, the latest apocalyptic predictions prove to be unfounded, and the issue is simply swept under the rug by an unrepentant hard left and big media that willingly promoted the end-times theories. They scare the bejesus out of people by proclaiming the end of the world is nigh because of everything from mass starvation to nuclear winter and then act as if all the false fearmongering should just be forgotten.
When you hear dire predictions about the end of the world as we know it, think of three words: consider the source. Consider just who is trying to instill abject fear in you that advanced intelligence must be placed on a short leash, the length of which should be determined by global elites and progressive geeks from California with a not-so-hidden agenda.
Indeed, once Bernie Sanders emerged as the self-proclaimed spokesman for putting the brakes on AI, it confirmed the oh-so-predictable ideological composition of the current apocalyptic crowd. Sanders, fresh off his embarrassing advocacy for the deplorable Graham Platner, introduced the “Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act” this month, seeking to short-circuit a super-advanced hypothetical AI system that does not yet exist, with the typically dark warnings about the future of the planet: “We don’t have months. We don’t have years. We’ve got to move now.” Right, just like they told us about overpopulation, the next ice age, global warming, Y2K, and all-encompassing climate change. Since we can’t understand the complexities of climate or vaccines or AI, we must take their word for it. Naturally, Barack Obama wanted a piece of the action, so he jumped in and urged his party to place AI regulation at the center of its agenda, seeking headlines by saying AI is “even more dangerous than nukes.”
The AI Apocalypse and Useful Idiots
There are a handful of serious conservatives such as Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) who are expressing concern about the expanding footprint of this world-altering technology. There is also useful idiot Steve Bannon, the disgraced ex-Trump operative who has aligned with Sanders on the AI issue in an apparent attempt to restore some level of relevance. But we are now seeing that the anti-AI movement is heavily concentrated among a growing chorus of hard leftists calling for - you guessed it – some kind of new powerful government/global entity to “oversee” the development of AI. Translation: they want you to essentially hand control of the most powerful technology ever invented over to them. The New York Post earlier this week unveiled the names of “Amodei’s handpicked super-woke globalists he thinks will save us from an AI apocalypse.”
If you are even the least bit inclined to support globalist oversight of AI, or trust these prominent figures in government and industry, think back to what they jointly foisted upon the country during the most recent national crisis, a real crisis, the pandemic. Joe Biden and the progressives calling the shots for him used Covid-19 as justification to suspend the US Constitution and rule over the public as never before. As Robert F. Kennedy amplified during his recent memorable speech at the Republican Midterm Convention, “Democrats obliterated the second leg of the First Amendment, the guaranteed right of assembly, by social distancing regulations that were completely un-science-based … violated the third leg of the First Amendment, the freedom to worship. They closed every church in our country for a year… torpedoed the 7th Amendment right to jury trial by giving liability shields to the giant pharmaceutical companies … violated the 5th Amendment by shutting down 3 million businesses with no due process and no just compensation … shut down the 4th Amendment, protection from unlawful searches and seizures, by forcing Americans to disclose their medical information before they could exercise their constitutional rights."
And now, the same crowd has a new leader in the private sector to complement Sen. Sanders, the evidently self-loathing or guilt-ridden CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei. He is ominously warning people about his own product - right before the midterms. Amodei’s head-shaking statement is akin to Henry Ford warning customers that his cars will kill them. Amodei called for “the right combination of governments” to provide “some kind of joint governance [to] control the technology, and then capped it off with, “I’m uncomfortable government didn’t build this technology.”
First off, should we not be suspicious of anyone trying to convince us that a massive UN-style global organization and a panel of far-left tech geeks from Silicon Valley should be formed to regulate the growth of AI? While this is a naked attempt to attract attention and seize whatever power or control might be available, Amodei’s call for heavy-handed government regulation also smacks of another shameless tactic deployed by large companies: drive out their smaller counterparts with regulations so burdensome that they cannot afford to comply.
True to form, the left has taken an issue they had largely ignored and suddenly created an existential crisis out of it, one that, naturally, they alone are positioned to solve with their cherished experts and a new AI world order - just as voters prepare to cast their ballots. It smells distinctly like an “election season psyop,” a psychological operation designed to scare the electorate into voting Democratic.
Crying Wolf
None of this should be interpreted as discounting legitimate concerns about AI. Emerging technologies always cause some degree of displacement and discomfort, and AI takes that to a new level. The grown-ups are the ones who will recognize the challenges and dangers and form a responsible bipartisan consensus about the way forward. The doomsayers, on the other hand, will use those same challenges and dangers to gin up fear, mistrust, and the urgency to control it all with massive federal oversight.
You are likely familiar with the old story about the boy who cried wolf. A shepherd boy is tasked with watching a flock of village sheep. To relieve his boredom, he runs toward the village screaming that a wolf is attacking his herd. The villagers rush up the hill only to find it was a prank. The boy repeats the prank days later, fooling the infuriated villagers again. Eventually, a real wolf emerges and begins attacking the flock. The terrified boy screams for help, but the villagers assume it is just another trick, ignore his cries, and the boy is out of luck.
That is the lesson for the left; you could possibly, theoretically, be right about the dangers of AI, but given your long history of convincing us that the world was about to go up in smoke when it wasn’t, how do you possibly expect us to believe you now?
