In a recent op-ed, AI-industry insiders Greg Jensen and Nir Bar Dea state: AI policy “must make society resilient to disruption and … avert technological catastrophe.” They warn that If the AI boom benefits the few and does not issue in a “shared destiny,” the populist backlash could have disastrous consequences.
The authors make two recommendations:
(1) The federal government should impose a special tax on AI companies and utilize the revenue to acquire AI stocks. The government should then “distribute them pro rata to citizens, who would hold them on the same footing as any other shareholder.”
(2) Federal regulators must ensure that AI models do not become self-programming hackers — ensure they are incapable of intruding into digital domains other than their own.
These proposals might float in Norway, but in Donald Trump’s D.C. they have all the buoyancy of a gold-leafed cannon ball.
Will the Trump administration and MAGA-GOP congressional majorities ensure “social resilience to disruption,” safeguard against “technological catastrophe,” and reduce concentration of wealth?
The administration is unlikely to curb the ambitions of the AI insiders closest to President Trump — Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and several others. These insiders oppose wealth redistribution. They argue that government regulation would handicap AI innovation in America and promote the interests of China, our chief geopolitical rival.
Our dysfunctional Congress is dominated by Trump’s anti-tax and anti-regulatory allies and enablers.
America’s AI companies are competing with China for technological dominance and with one another for profits and markets. Are they likely to self-regulate?
In 1923 the political theorist Carl Schmitt wrote: “Technology is the true revolutionary principle…All revolutions based on individual liberty, and democratic ideals are antiquated forms of recreation. A society built exclusively on technological advances would be revolutionary; but would soon destroy itself and its technology.”
Will we find ourselves in AI bliss or in AI Armageddon? Only time will tell, but if it’s Armageddon, we can’t say we weren’t warned.
Andrew Bjelland, Salt Lake City