America’s AI titans used to warn about the technology’s extinction-level threat to humanity. “Stop me before I harm the species,” was their gist. Then they radically changed their tune. Anybody today who questions Silicon Valley’s accelerationist drive is an “AI doomer” — a Luddite who might as well be on China’s team. Safety is woke. So too is worrying about your kids’ mental health or your future earnings. Anything that gets in the way of the US winning the superintelligence race is either uninformed or dumb. That includes most of you.
But you are in good company. It is rare for the US public to agree on anything these days. Fear of AI is as close to a national consensus as it gets. A clear majority says that AI will do more harm than good. In one recent NBC poll, AI’s net negative rating ranked below ICE, the disliked immigration enforcement agency. A sizeable share of both Democrats and Republicans oppose new data centres. Even strong voter preferences, however, are little match for the lobbying clout of America’s tech giants, especially with Donald Trump behind them.
By encouraging the view that AI, like the tides, is unstoppable, Silicon Valley has pulled off a public relations feat. That US politics is fatalistic about its ability to regulate what could be the most societally disruptive technology ever is worrying — especially in a republic celebrating its 250th anniversary. In practice, there is nothing inevitable about the speed and shape of AI, unless democracy renounces its say. “AI is not some deus ex machina,” says Karen Kornbluh, former director of the National AI Office. “It is humanity’s creation and our choice whether to exercise democratic control or not.”