There’s a Right Way to Regulate AI—and a Very Wrong Way |
There’s a Right Way to Regulate AI—and a Very Wrong Way
Trump is a fool to say no regulation’s needed. But don’t let’s leave the solution to Anthropic and Open AI.
You’ve probably heard the one about the masochist who asks the sadist to beat him up. The sadist says no. That hoary joke came to mind when I saw President Donald Trump’s reply to Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei’s statement that artificial intelligence has become too dangerous not to regulate. Two rival AI chief executives, Open AI’s Sam Altman and xAI’s Elon Musk, agreed with Amodei. But Trump said no:
[W]hen, in the History of Business, did anyone see the Leaders of an Industry call for Regulation that, if strongly implemented, will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy? AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX, no different from RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA — UKRAINE, UKRAINE, UKRAINE — IMPEACHMENT HOAX #1 — IMPEACHMENT HOAX #2 — and all of the other HOAXES and SCAMS that America was forced to endure through the Destructionists’ and Deviants’ foul play and illegal conduct.
[W]hen, in the History of Business, did anyone see the Leaders of an Industry call for Regulation that, if strongly implemented, will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy? AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX, no different from RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA — UKRAINE, UKRAINE, UKRAINE — IMPEACHMENT HOAX #1 — IMPEACHMENT HOAX #2 — and all of the other HOAXES and SCAMS that America was forced to endure through the Destructionists’ and Deviants’ foul play and illegal conduct.
I bet you feel better already!
From a strictly medical point of view, my analogy of the masochist and the sadist does not apply. Amodei, Altman, and Musk can be faulted for not banding together earlier to demand forcefully that AI be regulated at the federal level. (Didn’t they see The Matrix?) But procrastination isn’t in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (though being a billionaire perhaps should). For his part, Trump isn’t a sadist, exactly, but rather suffers from the related disorder of malignant narcissism, worsened lately by a vanishing attention span. It’s our hard luck that a new global crisis is arising under the most mentally unstable president ever to occupy the White House—worse even than the heavy-drinking, deeply paranoid Richard Nixon, at the height of the........