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Every morning brings a new warning about “artificial intelligence” (AI) along the lines of, “We are all going to die.”
By afternoon, or by the next day at the latest, comes the counter-warning: “Stand down. Nothing to see here.”
For those of us who need a YouTube video to start the dishwasher or to find the emergency lights on a rental car, the correct posture is difficult to guess. “Guess” is the operative word here, because if 0.01% of America understands the debate, I would be surprised.
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Almost everyone who cared to read or watch the Cold War unfold knew the score of that arms race when it came to nuclear weapons.
Similarly, most conventional conflicts—whether Ukraine’s extraordinary defense against the Russian invasion, Israel’s multi-front war following Hamas’ 10/7 attack in 2023, or America’s ongoing battle with Iran to deny it both nuclear weapons and control over the Strait of Hormuz—are of the sort that most free people who want to understand those conflicts can understand (with a little time and care in choosing their sources).
Not so with “AI” and its potential and dangers.
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On Saturday, Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive, said in an essay that AI was advancing too quickly for researchers to continue building it safely.
Within a day, Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive; Elon Musk, SpaceX’s chief executive; and Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind’s CEO, all said they agreed on the need for a slower pace.
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By Monday morning, billionaire tech investor David Sacks’ response to Amodei was everywhere on X, formerly known as Twitter, and the post had some bite. In addition to rejecting “AI doomerism,” Sacks unsubtly proposed that Amodei could be motivated by self-interest (which is pretty much Adam Smith 101): “I don’t see what you see in the lab. If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible.”
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Then Sacks landed the roundhouse punch:
“But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel. Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability.”
Sacks may or may not have President Donald Trump’s ear on this topic, but Sacks is the co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, so there is a good chance he does.
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So what should President Trump do? A good answer is…nothing. If ever a possible problem had “Congress” as its final address, it is this one.
There is a Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, that has 21 members.
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There is a House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Arkansas Republican Rep. Rick Crawford, that has 27 members.
These are the two committees whose membership belongs solely to the party leaders in each chamber. Those leaders tend to pick the smart folks in Congress to serve on these committees, legislators who enjoy a measure of respect on both sides of the aisle. That isn’t always the case, but generally it is true.
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These 48 elected members of Congress should have the lead on this debate. It is unlikely they will have an opportunity before the midterms to gather and hear from even a half-dozen combatants in the AI wars, but the committees’ staffs can certainly be about the work of making sure the controversy is well briefed and counter-briefed.
When these 48 get to hearing the arguments and debating among themselves about the best way forward—and whether that would include new statutes or a new agency with new regulatory authority over AI—they can then communicate what is advisable to communicate to the public, aware as they are, that Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping is watching everything we do as a country.
As President Trump correctly observed about the debate over AI guardrails when it comes to China: President Xi is the guardrail. It is foolish to think Xi will be satisfied with a silver medal in the AI Olympics.
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We are, however, a free people, and there is no counterpart to Xi here, and we are also marked by a reluctance to trust corporate America, especially its most powerful titans, with the authority to chart our laws.
As a republic of laws, it is assumed that actions by private-sector actors are legal until they can be conclusively proven not to be legal. That’s the free market. All around America is the abundance that free markets produce. When World Cup crowds dipped their collective toes in the currents of America’s vast wealth this past summer—best represented, it seemed, by Buc-ee’s—most were amazed.
Americans are generally unaware of the extraordinary blessings of the combination of the rule of law and free markets. But it’s everywhere, available for everyone to see.
Which means to me that Congress needs to deliberate carefully about intervening in the free market without a lot of study beforehand. The legislators can move quickly if indeed they judge the moment to be urgent. If it is urgent, I hope they do.
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But “open letters” from concerned citizens, much less self-interested CEOs, have never been the end of the discussion, and sometimes they don’t rate as beginnings or even contributions to the conversation.
The future of AI is very much up to Congress. Exactly zero agencies have been established with the purpose of overseeing this technology. The Federal Trade Commission was established in 1914, so it certainly wasn’t dispatched to rule Silicon Valley and its like-minded locales. We are not organized as the European Commission is—thank goodness.
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No, the private sector gets to run with the AI ball as far and as fast as it wants until and unless Congress says stop via a proposed statute and the president agrees with a signature.
That’s the final word on the debate unless and until somebody steps up with an argument based on law and not fear.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM HUGH HEWITT
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show” heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
