How to Contain-Unleash Artificial Intelligence

Melania at the White House with her Robo-Friend

How to Contain/Unleash Artificial Intelligence

Or is it unstoppable with dire consequences unavoidable?

“The U.S. government is insolvent. That’s not hyperbole.” 

Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University and David M. Walker, former U.S. Comptroller General, in a Fortune Magazine Op-ed citing the Bureau of the Fiscal Service

If you think AI is a phase that simply will fade, think again. It is second only climate change (that “hoax” that is flooding, burning and disrupting life in every corner of the planet) in its impact on modern life. Subsistence farmers and self-sufficient isolated pockets of humanity may have less to fear… unless they need to interact or trade with the outside world… but for everybody else, hang on for a very rough ride. In the annals of self-inflicted human disasters, even the failing Trump (Netanyahu?) WAR against Iran pales in comparison. AI is just so much more powerful.

There are populists justified in watching jobs vaporize by the millions (billions?), environmentalists who properly oppose construction of the massive building necessary to house AI’s required file servers only to watch the related exponential rise in electricity demands and resulting down and very dirty pollution, and the societal observers who note that the money involved can only magnify the imbalance between the rising rich and everybody else. In short, there is nothing that will stay the same. NOTHING!!! In fact, the swirling, shifting sands may ultimately require socialism as the only viable system of governance. Who can earn enough to buy their products when jobs disappear?!

If all the wealth is concentrated into a diminishing minority of billionaires and a few privileged centimillionaires, what political system can otherwise survive? I mean if the United States is truly insolvent… The baby steps of such one-sided domination are everywhere. For example, online retail Tsar Jeff Bezos (Amazon) wants a mega-combination of all major manufacturers as [his vision of “business”] is trying to leapfrog into the artificial intelligence race with a $100-billion fund to acquire manufacturers and bring more AI superpowers to factory floors.

“The Amazon founder has reportedly traveled to the Middle East and elsewhere to meet with potential investors for the massive fund. If he succeeds, it would be one of the largest buyout funds and could change the way products are designed, made and distributed… Here is what you need to know about the big plans: [Documents] connected to the fund described it as a ‘manufacturing transformation vehicle’ that would buy companies that could use an AI upgrade in sectors including chip manufacturing, defense and aerospace, according to the Wall Street Journal.” By Nilesh Christopher writing for the March 26th Los Angeles Times. This probably will not be the end of such massive consolidation, and it augurs for a fully corporate state, Trump’s dream.

As Trump’s federal effort at preempting state efforts to regulated AI, with “regulation light” by dictatorial executive order, states are still struggling with more meaningful “balanced” guardrails. As Ian Kreitzberg noted in Puck.com (March 25th). On March 25th, “President Trump named a who’s who of tech executives to a new body called the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST)… It’s an unsurprising move for Trump, whose core policy stance on A.I. can be summed up as decidedly pro-business.” States are trying to reject this federal effort at preemption, speaking much more for “the rest of us,” as Kreitzberg wrote in Puck (3/24):

“New York Governor Kathy Hochul sounds like many politicians on A.I. these days—impressed, maybe a little worried, and trying to be practical about the unstoppable technological freight train headed our way. When I called her late last week, she waxed poetic about ensuring A.I. is ‘compatible with the public good’ before ticking off the various trade-offs she’s now trying to navigate: bringing high-paying tech jobs to the state without driving white-collar work to extinction, solving society’s ‘most-pressing problems’ without jacking up constituents’ electric bills, etcetera. In short, she wants the best of all possible worlds. ‘I do not want to be alarmist,’ she told me. ‘I see the upside, I see the downside.’

“Hochul’s middle-of-the-road mentality is not unique—California Gov. Gavin Newsom is as focused on regulating A.I. as on ensuring the industry continues to thrive, and former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin talked up ‘responsible governance’ without ‘stifling’ the A.I. industry. Likewise, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis wants to ‘protect consumers and support innovation’ while Rep. Sam Liccardo, the congressman representing Palo Alto and Atherton, told my Puck partner Leigh Ann Caldwell this week that Democrats need to get over their anxiety and embrace the future. (No surprise there…)

“But as the technology accelerates and the specter of widespread job displacement begins to appear slightly less hypothetical, a populist backlash is building at both ends of the political spectrum. Hochul told me she’s bracing for a ‘seismic impact,’ and worries about ‘students who took on debt to get degrees in fields that may be evaporating because of A.I.’ Other politicians have gone further: Sen. Bernie Sanders recently called for a national moratorium on all data center construction—not just to keep electric bills low, he says, but to prevent ‘a catastrophic impact on the lives of working-class Americans, eliminating tens of millions of blue- and white-collar jobs in every sector of our economy.’ Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has sounded similar notes, declaring that ‘these companies cannot be trusted with this power.’” It’s just sad that the Trump led billionaires just don’t seem to have enough money or power.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I’d like to pull a quote attributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto after he led the Japanese fleet that bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941… and apply it to AI: “We have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.”