|
There is a manufactured quality to the sudden explosion of uninformed and irrational online screeds against data centers. The related panic over artificial intelligence smells almost as suspicious. Is it mainly driven by AI CEOs worried about falling behind upstart competitors and eager for Washington to erect new barriers to entry into their industry? Or is the real fuel for this media fire coming from foreign actors who want to disrupt U.S. technological leadership? Perhaps there’s an international coalition of the shilling. Heavy skepticism is in order for a number of reasons, not least the uniquely unpersuasive cast of characters who have joined together to issue
warnings against letting technology markets run. Millionaire socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders is always opposed to letting markets run, regardless of the circumstances, so if AI is sentient, it shouldn’t take the Sanders critique personally. Even wealthier than Mr. Sanders, Bill Gates has offered a more nuanced take on AI, but he’s calling for a “strong role” for government. This Gates message arrives just a few years after he helped talk senators into a strong role on climate funding that amounted to an inflation-inducing disaster. Have events of the recent past convinced anyone that Mr. Gates is possessed of sound judgment? Some of the media’s impulsive promoters of the Covid panic have also signed on to the AI hysteria, along with some of the nation’s most opaque nonprofit activists. And now we have one of the country’s premier experts in partisan polarization sensing a new opportunity. Evan Gorelick reports for the New York Times: Former President Barack Obama warned during a recent private fund-raising event that artificial intelligence technology could be “dangerous” if not properly managed, as he implored Democrats to aggressively develop political and governing agendas to prioritize the issue in the coming years. It remains unclear how Mr. Obama would be able to identify potential AI dangers or properly manage them. Speaking of the potential dangers of AI in the wrong hands or even in no hands at all, one also can’t help but wonder just how powerful the technology is right now if even in good hands it seems to be exerting a very promising but hardly revolutionary impact on U.S.
productivity. Is this a tech tool that is astoundingly powerful only for malign purposes? That’s possible but it doesn’t seem the way to bet.
|
