Make money doing the work you believe in
Some strange assumptions in this Ed Luce article on AI regulation.
One is that Americans want AI stopped. “Fear of AI is as close to a national consensus as it gets.” A YouGov poll from February, one of the most complete I’ve seen, has 45% of Americans seeing AI as more negative than positive. That’s not exactly a clear call.
“A sizeable share of both Democrats and Republicans oppose new data centres.” Willing to bet this is more about environmental impact and local energy bills than about AI itself.
Another is that this means the development of AI should be slowed down or stopped. “In practice, there is nothing inevitable about the speed and shape of AI, unless democracy renounces its say.” Never mind that there are factors in play beyond the like/don’t like, such as the economic and geopolitical cost of ceding a technological lead to an undemocratic development centre.
He does make a good point, though, in that the US chip industry wants plenty of domestic AI growth to stimulate chip demand and so supports the push for lighter regulation to better compete with China – while at the same time wanting to sell more chips to China.
And with the chip industry is propelling the stock market, they have a strong card to play.
(Although, I'll add that it's telling that Nvidia is not one of the companies invited to accompany Trump to China tomorrow.)
