Enough of this neurosis
King Charles has warned of the “existential dangers” posed by AI.
I suppose that makes a change from the time he warned that the “doomsday clock of climate change” was ticking toward midnight. Or from when he told us that genetically modified food risked “the biggest environmental disaster of all time.”
I do not like to criticize the King of my native country, but I am not sure it is wise for him to keep straying into public policy like this.
To be fair, the King is not the only one warning of the dangers of AI. Similar warnings have come from inside the industry itself, from leading figures such as Dario Amodei and Sam Altman.
Why, though, would people who have invested billions of dollars in cutting-edge AI want to invite government regulation of innovation in their own industry?
Over the past few years, Western AI firms have poured vast sums of capital into building foundational AI technology from scratch. Alarmingly, there is evidence that a number of Chinese AI firms have been able to replicate much of what those companies built. The FBI has described this as “industrial-scale” copying of American intellectual property.
Having failed to protect their advantage by technical means, the industry now wants the state to protect it for them.
Remember how, a couple of decades ago, we all used Yahoo before Google came along?
Imagine if Yahoo had been able to persuade the US government to restrict the development of search engines. What if Yahoo had warned of the risks of “irresponsible” search engines that would allow anyone to look up anything? Some people, they might have said, could even look up how to commit dastardly acts. Regulate it!
Or remember when everyone had a BlackBerry, rather than an iPhone? What if BlackBerry had persuaded the US government to slow down the development of smartphones? Those touch-screen devices, they might have warned, would allow all sorts of unsavory social media. Best control it!
When AI industry leaders urge the state to regulate their sector, I do not believe they are being altruistic. They are lobbying for a regulatory “moat” to protect their commercial position. If they really wanted to slow down, they could slow down.
Among the commentariat, I cannot help noticing that some of the most alarmist voices on AI are the same people who told us Covid was going to kill us all.
Cast your mind back to those days of hysteria. Millions of people in countries such as Britain were placed under effective house arrest, needing a reason even to leave their own homes. Transatlantic travel was suspended for months. Schools were shut. Businesses were closed.
The real disease was not the virus. It was a form of neurosis: a hysterical overreaction that did far more lasting damage than the virus itself.
In the 1970s, the doomers told us that nuclear winter would end humanity. In the 1980s it was acid rain. In the 1990s it was global warming, which during the noughties morphed into climate change. Then came Covid hysteria. Now it is AI.
I have no doubt that there will be downsides to AI. Like the printing press, new technology can be put to good purposes and bad ones. The printing press allowed the Bible to be printed and read in many languages. The same technology allowed the publication of Mein Kampf.
AI, too, will serve both good and evil. Human ingenuity will require further ingenuity to counter the evil. The risks of AI will need to be tackled — by AI. Just as bad ideas in print were countered by good ideas in print.
I am sad to see the King adopt, yet again, such a doomster stance. Think of the history of the English-speaking peoples at times when there really was reason to lack confidence in the future.
Think of Charles’s forebear, King Alfred, in 878 AD, when Christian England seemed on the brink of extinction. Or in 1315, when there really was an environmental disaster: the crops failed and famine followed. Or imagine what it must have felt like to live in England in 1348, when the Black Death killed four in ten people.
You want doomster? Imagine what they felt in November 1916, when the Battle of the Somme ended with some 420,000 British casualties.
You want pessimism about the future? Imagine it is London in October 1940. Your city is being bombed to rubble and a Nazi army is massing for invasion.
Except that instead of doom, a 14-year-old girl — Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen and Charles’s mother — gave a radio address to the nation’s children. She assured them that “in the end all will be well; for God will care for us and give us victory and peace.”
Contrast that quiet assertion of faith in the future with King Charles’s endless undermining of it.
It seems to me that the further we are from real danger, and the more materially assured we become, the more we produce leaders who indulge the ridiculous idea that we are on the brink.
In the six years that I have lived in America, I have marveled at the optimism I see all around me, especially here in the South. Yes, everyone faces challenges. The future could go awry. Nothing in this world is certain. Fear and uncertainty are part of the human condition.
But here there is an inner faith in the future: that “in the end all will be well.” That is perhaps why more Americans, especially in the South, marry younger and have more children than Europeans — the ultimate vote of confidence in the future.
The West needs leaders who give us confidence in the future. Leaders who convey the idea that, no matter how great the challenge, we will see it through. Leaders who love our culture, and love those who love it too.
Yes, AI will require us to adapt — just as we once had to work out how to make trains and cars safer. But we need to stop this relentless doom-mongering. Enough of this Western neurosis.