Several researchers have recently expressed fears of AI producing human extinction within perhaps ten years. While AI offers enormous potential to increase our standard of living, increasing economic freedom offers a safe alternative way to grow the economy.
I have written before and still believe in AI’s enormous benefits if humans retain control. I lack the expertise to evaluate rogue AI’s potential existential threat.
The AI label applies to two distinct innovations. The first is machine learning, where a program learns from trials scored against some metric. The second is artificial general intelligence (AGI). From what I understand, AGI creates the existential threat; machine learning differs little from supercomputers solving mathematical models. We can reap the benefits from powerful machine learning without risking humanity through AGI.
Freedom can increase our standard of living in numerous ways. To begin, eliminating government policies slowing or preventing building can improve housing affordability. Economist Enrico Moreti’s research finds that the higher housing prices from building constraints have reduced economic growth enormously by keeping Americans from moving to highly productive but expensive cities.
Pruning regulatory compliance could also boost growth. Millions of Americans, including one in ten bank employees, work complying with laws and regulations as opposed to creating value. Compliance’s value depends entirely on the value of the underlying rule. HR employees running DEI seminars create no value.
Reforming environmental reviews, starting with the National Environmental Policy Act, could spur growth without harming the environment. Impact studies merely generate six figure salaries for environmental scientists. Reviews and litigation help keep America from building new factories, pushing manufacturing jobs abroad.
Government-dominated sectors like education and healthcare are wildly inefficient. Government K-12 schools fail to teach basic skills productive citizens need. Higher education produces the woke mind virus attacking Western civilization and grads unfit for any business. Healthcare spends billions on paperwork and billing codes.
The Precautionary Principle places a burden of proof on new technologies to demonstrate they will not harm the environment. While this goes too far, it reflects a key insight: life today is great. Destroying humanity in a quest for a little more growth would be more than tragic.
How should we interpret then the chorus of voices fearing AI? President Trump astutely compared the extinction threats to the climate change hoax. Threats of imminent catastrophe often drive the growth of government.
Free market economists warn that industry calls for government protection from extinction could provide cover for regulation benefitting the leading AI firms. Utilities, airlines, and cable television secured government protection through questionable economic claims. Regulation typically advantages large firms over small competitors and customers.
While a real possibility, touting your product’s existential potential complicates securing government assistance. The risk could easily lead government to ban AI. Dismissing the whistleblowers as pushing industry propaganda ignores the claim that many researchers share this fear. Industry leaders do not deny that their researchers fear this.
Existential risk fears threaten approval of the data centers AI needs even if heavily regulated by government. A data center backlash is already underway. Americans facing extinction will do anything in their power to stop data centers.
The extinction threat, if real, alters evaluation of a government cartel. Suppose that AI attains under a government cartel half its potential capacity at twice the cost. Normally this is terrible for consumers. Yet I would happily accept this to eliminate a 1% chance of extinction.
Some believe that China is stoking AI fears (and data center opposition) to help the CCP in the AI race. We should investigate Chinese funding and debate the role of foreign money in American politics.
But dismissing Americans’ AI worries as Chinese propaganda is patronizing and unlikely to allay fears. Furthermore, if China wishes to commit civilizational suicide through AI, why race them to the cliff?
Perhaps AI fears are merely the latest manifestation of anxiety over new technology. The Luddites who destroyed power looms personify opposition to technology. Yet the objects of Luddite wrath could never subjugate humanity. Many experts find an AGI extinction threat plausible. Americans should not be made to accept AGI against their wishes.
Daniel Sutter is the Charles G. Koch Professor of Economics at Troy University. The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of Troy University.
