Giving control of AI to tech leaders and politicians is more dangerous than letting all of us manage its risks.
Giving control of AI to tech leaders and politicians is more dangerous than letting all of us manage its risks.
T here is an intelligence loose in the world that has no respect for humanity. It seeks to manipulate us, pit us against one another, and harness us to its own purposes, and it is certain it can run your life better than you can.
It’s not what you’re thinking: The intelligence is that of every socialist and collectivist who has ever lived, from Karl Marx to Bernie Sanders. Whether or not misaligned artificial intelligence truly poses a threat, misaligned human intelligence, seeking to concentrate unlimited power in the hands of government bureaucrats, remains the greatest threat we face.
While AI’s rapid advances are concerning, dangerous technology is nothing new. At the 1830 opening of the world’s first intercity passenger railway in England, the locomotive fatally injured a member of Parliament. For roughly 70 years, cars burned leaded gasoline, pumping a neurotoxin into the air we breathed. The technological miracles of the 20th century also made possible the devastation of the world wars.
And yet, the advances of the 20th century have also ushered in two centuries of unprecedented prosperity, more than doubled life expectancies, and cut the childhood mortality rate by roughly 90 percent.
It calls to mind God’s warning in Deuteronomy: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life.” This promise and warning should extend to our inventions and scientific discoveries as well.
AI is a transformative technology. Steam and rail freed our work from the limits of human and animal muscle. AI is doing the same for knowledge: It is a condensed, adaptable form of humanity’s collected knowledge, ready to be applied to our problems, both small and large.
Which brings us to the age-old question: A new tool may be the work of innovators and entrepreneurs, but who controls it? History features countless kings and aspiring despots who seized each new tool, wielding the power to control the technology and humanity itself to conform to their own ends. America’s founding was genius in that it rejected that tradition in favor of the God-given rights of each individual. The Founders knew that our safety and prosperity lie not in the hands of an anointed few but in the whole of the American people.
In industry after industry, the so-called experts have been overwhelmed by upstarts: Ford and GM by Tesla, IBM by Microsoft and Apple, Blockbuster by Netflix. When Thomas Edison lit the first practical light bulb, Nikola Tesla, who would lay the foundations of the modern electrical grid, was still five years away from stepping off a boat in New York.
Government-enforced monopolies don’t just threaten liberty; they stifle innovation. When AI leaders beg the government to regulate away competition, it’s the oldest trick in the book, and we shouldn’t be fooled by it. The central holding of technological power — in this case, of AI — is never a good solution. Perhaps these tech leaders and politicians fear AI will replace exactly one job: their own, as self-anointed high priests of central planning and moral arbiters of society. Many of them have spent decades preaching climate alarmism and a de-growth agenda, while portraying humanity as a parasite feeding off the Earth.
Are these the people you want to speak for all of us and control our future? If the world’s most gifted mathematicians and programmers couldn’t build a perfect AI sandbox, do you think the regulators who gave us Covid lockdowns and cars that shut off at red lights will do better?
Meanwhile, the private sector is already harnessing AI to solve our greatest problems. Hospitals adopting AI have cut mortality rates, and the first AI-designed medicines are already in human trials.
The risk of a rogue AI agent doing serious damage is far higher if we turn over control of the technology to bureaucrats and a few favored business executives. To outsource the right to develop AI is to leave the rest of us beholden to the imperfect foresight and murky motives of the few.
Every discovery comes with the possibility of construction and destruction. AI is certainly not risk-free. But if history has taught us anything, we will be far safer letting millions manage those risks and push us forward. Once again, potential blessings and curses have been set before us.
Now is not the time to let a few elites in Washington, D.C., or Silicon Valley make these choices for humanity.