From Gary Bauer, American Values:
Is the panic over artificial intelligence (AI) this election year’s COVID? While I acknowledge there are legitimate concerns about AI that deserve serious consideration, the media and Democrat-driven fear and panic look suspicious. You can throw Communist China into the mix, too.
COVID was a new virus. We had no immunity to it. It was a serious disease when it suddenly appeared in late 2019. Tragically, many vulnerable people died. That’s all true. It’s also true that the virus came out of a lab in Communist China, perhaps even intentionally. There is evidence that Chinese officials tried to spread the virus around the world.
But every Democrat governor immediately used the virus as an excuse to lock down their states and shut down the economy. Just as President Trump was beginning his reelection campaign, Democrats used COVID as an excuse to change election laws, making it far easier to cheat. And, wow, what a coincidence—(NOT!)—Donald Trump got beat.
Well, here we are now in President Trump’s second term. Manufacturing jobs are growing rapidly. Job gains are going to American citizens, not illegal aliens. There is a huge construction boom underway. Trade unions are reporting massive surges in membership because there is a tremendous need for carpenters, HVAC technicians, electricians, plumbers, etc.
The stock market is hitting record highs, and so is your 401(k). The profits of American companies, the best indicator for future hiring, are going up at an unprecedented rate.
But, all of a sudden, a few months out from the midterm elections, we get this massive panic about why no data centers should be built. “They’re noisy and take up too much land,” some say. It’s almost impossible to imagine how much empty land there is in America. According to one estimate, only 6% of the total acreage in the U.S. is developed land.
And then, the whole country has a “day of reckoning” because a relatively inexperienced 27-year-old researcher went on social media and said AI might wipe out humanity “by the end of the decade.”
I don’t know anything about this young researcher. But I do know that radical leftists have been making wildly inaccurate predictions about the end of humanity for decades. I also know that Democrats are making opposition to data centers part of their strategy to take back Congress.
Are there dangers with AI? Of course, there are. I believe it would be prudent to be as careful as possible. Data centers should take care of their own electricity and water needs. Many are beginning to do that.
But there are also people with very clear agendas who are spreading this panic and disinformation. If they can crash the economy before Election Day, Democrats and their radical Marxist allies could run up huge margins in the House and the Senate. It’s just like COVID all over again.
No Going Back
While I do have some big concerns about AI, the reality is that there is no going back. This genie is out of the bottle. We are in a race—especially against Communist China—to develop advanced AI technologies. If we suddenly slam on the brakes, Beijing benefits tremendously. Winning the AI race is an economic and national security imperative. The experts say Communist China is 6 to 9 months behind us.
Here’s another way to think about this.
There was a big technology race during World War II. The Nazis put the first jet fighter into combat. They launched ballistic missiles at London. They were also working on atomic weapons.
Imagine if Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer and other American scientists said, “We’re not going to work on the Manhattan Project because atomic weapons might destroy the world.”
While it might be desirable to have a world without nuclear weapons, it was never an option. Germany wasn’t going to stop its research. How different would the world be today if Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union had nuclear weapons and we did not? What would the world look like today if Communist China, not the United States, had developed the Internet?
It is absurd to think that the United States will somehow be safer if we don’t develop the same technology that every other major power in the world is racing to develop.
AI can’t be stopped at the border. If you’re worried about American companies developing AI, what do you think AI developed by Communist China is going to do to you? If they have AI and we don’t, we will be at their mercy.
Elon Musk has joined the call to set up some guardrails, and that is encouraging to me. Not only is he brilliant, but he was heavily influenced by the works of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov and has long had reservations about AI. But Musk is not afraid of new technology, and he is on our side.
What we really need is not a pause on AI, but a pause on the AI panic.
THE RIGHT RENDITION 