Top AI companies are blatantly seeking special privileges under cover of warning against the AI-pocalypse.
That’s the best explanation for the sudden flurry of doom-mongering from CEOs like Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.
These moguls say their industry needs to tap the brakes on the tech’s rapid progress, but will (rightly) warn that still the United States still needs to beat China in the AI-development race — leaving “the only choice” to be a de-facto cartelization, with the feds setting up guardrails and offering their companies protections against disastrous mistakes.
That is: What they really want is to protect themselves from liability by shifting responsibility to the government.
Think of the Section 230 shield for social media, blogs and online platforms from libelous content posted by users, except this would protect Anthropic etc. if their AIs go rogue, causing billions or trillions of dollars in damage.
Or how “too big to fail” protected the megabanks that bumbled their way into the 2007-08 global financial crisis.
Getting off the hook for harms their tech causes would put the AI giants in great positions for their coming IPOs.
The cynical combo of doom-mongering and pleas for federal oversight feels like “a Trojan horse,” Vice President JD Vance fumed Monday — quite rightly.
As a plus for progressives, this scheme is sure to produce a vast new pack of lefty billionaires.
Yes, AI firms and their backers have been funneling millions to political candidates of both parties.
Yet Amodei, most obviously, has long worked closely with Democrats: As The Post’s Miranda Devine reports, Anthropic’s “bipartisan” National Security and Public Sector Advisory Council is riddled with ex-Biden and -Obama intel officials.
A former national-security adviser to Sen. Chuck Schumer is also on the panel.
Oh, and Altman’s OpenAI just hired the senator’s daughter, Jessica Schumer, for a top policy job.
Many of this crew are devotees of the feel-good lefty movement Effective Altruism — whose Tarbell Center for AI Journalism actually pays the salaries of journalists embedded with mainstream news outlets like Time, Bloomberg, The Guardian and NBC News.
Former President Barack Obama recently joined the campaign, warning of AI’s dangers and urging Dems to make AI regulation the heart of their political agenda — pushing for the cartel that Altman and Amodei want in the name of reining them in.
Don’t fall for the hysteria: If these companies want guardrails to avoid AI tragedies, they can adopt them all by themselves.
Indeed, nothing will motivate them toward caution more than knowing they’ll be held liable; offer protections, and you remove their incentive to keep their products safe.
So let them slow down, if that’s what they think wise.
Having the American public to protect them from responsibility for getting it wrong is just foolish.