Unintelligent AI Regulation
Plus: Judgement, not acquiescence; Harry the King thinks twice; and are you down with TPP?
Proposals to regulate artificial intelligence (AI) saturated Congress and state legislatures in 2023. These bills advanced wildly varied regulatory approaches, ranging from somewhat modest disclosure regimes to comprehensive frameworks.
Too many lawmakers have decided that AI very likely could, as Elon Musk put it, “kill us all.” Such fears — stoked by such technologists as Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman – in general stem from sensationalist fearmongering rather than anything substantive, and they have produced many bills that are — in technical jargon — bonkers.
This author discussed all this in National Review:
Typifying the unseriousness with which many in Washington treat AI, President Joe Biden’s inspirations to regulate the technology reportedly include a viewing of Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One (you know, the famous documentary). Let’s hope a rewatch of Ghostbusters doesn’t persuade him to prevent urban rampage by nationalizing the marshmallow industry.
Unfortunately, many in government, the media, and private industry share Biden’s overwrought fears. Technologists such as Elon Musk often speak of AI primarily as a mortal threat. Softer variations include theories that AI, if not micromanaged by regulators, inevitably will cause mass unemployment or widespread discrimination. One commentator on X (formerly Twitter) recently voiced the maximalist version of this perspective, advocating that “we kill the demon robots before they kill us.”
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By framing AI policy in apocalyptic terms, policy-makers ignore the fact that most AI-enabled products have more to do with mundane activities such as shipping logistics, data analysis, and spell-check than with supercomputers trying to take over the world. These common tools, which never star in movies, help individuals complete ordinary daily tasks or businesses increase operational efficiencies.
For example, the aforementioned Hawley–Blumenthal bill would impact many common tools including Grammarly, Vimeo, and smartphone cameras, as the R Street Institute’s Shoshana Weissmann explains. “Because it’s impossible to know if content will be used in illegal ways, it’s unclear how these companies could comply with the law without removing all AI features from their products,” Weissmann writes. “The resulting deluge of lawsuits could bring AI development in the United States to a grinding halt.”
Government certainly should monitor advanced systems that could (if abused) threaten national security. Regulatory regimes must grow from realistic assessments of risk rather than Hollywood plotlines. Moreover, they must promote permissionless innovation and, in turn, economic and technological dynamism.
Prosperity occurs where government opts against erecting barriers to private citizens innovating, collaborating, trading, and pursuing their own goals. This dynamic has asserted itself throughout history, from Ancient Egypt to post-communist Europe and China. It has caused America’s relatively free tech sector to dominate, and Europe’s heavily regulated tech sector to stagnate.
Today, American policy-makers must choose with respect to AI: freedom or technocracy, prosperity or economic insignificance.
Some Wisdom
What is the duty of an elected official? To function merely as a mouthpiece, a dumb pipe for the already-held views of her constituents? Or to lead, to shape public opinion, and to vote in accordance with her own judgement and conscience?
Edmund Burke, the father of modern Anglo-American conservatism, addressed his own constituents on the matter:
Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
My worthy colleague says, his will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If government were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior. But government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate, and another decide; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments?
To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience, — these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.
Some Beauty
The famous St. Crispin’s Day speech often dominates popular discussions of Shakespeare’s Henry V — and for good reason. But the Bard gave the titular English king several spectacular monologues, all of which deserve attention.
The night before the Battle of Agincourt, Henry wanders his camp, his identity hidden beneath a knight’s cloak. The bedraggled English had lost many men to disease during their now-teetering campaign, and the soldiers are dreading the dawn. (The French are longing for it.) Both sides expect Harry of England to lose badly to the forces of Charles of France.
A young soldier tells Henry, not recognizing him, that the king bears a terrible moral responsibility for the lives of the soldiers. Having noted that the rank and file do not know whether the king’s “cause [is] just and his quarrel honourable” (in Henry’s words), the soldier says:
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all "We died at such a place;" some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.
The king and the soldier nearly come to blows over it.
But Henry, once alone, reflects more deeply on his station and his burden:
Upon the king! let us our lives, our souls, Our debts, our careful wives, Our children and our sins lay on the king! We must bear all. O hard condition, Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath Of every fool, whose sense no more can feel But his own wringing! What infinite heart's-ease Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy! And what have kings, that privates have not too, Save ceremony, save general ceremony? And what art thou, thou idle ceremony? What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers? What are thy rents? What are thy comings in? O ceremony, show me but thy worth! What is thy soul of adoration? Art thou aught else but place, degree and form, Creating awe and fear in other men? Wherein thou art less happy being fear'd Than they in fearing. What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness, And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!
This monologue, the foil of the next morning’s dramatically confident Band of Brothers speech, adds extraordinary depth and texture to the character of a man whose reputation is primarily that of triumphant warlord and conquering king.
Some Humor
Something on X this week tangentially reminded this author of Zach Galifianakis’s interview (if that word can be applied) of Hillary Clinton on his Funny or Die show, Between Two Ferns.
Sundry Links, &c.
Issues & Insights: “Senator Floats Garlic As Newest National Security Threat”
Daily Caller: “Actually, Voters Do Want Washington To Reform Social Security And Medicare”