Over the past several months, as artificial intelligence and its potentially catastrophic effects on society have taken center stage, discussion around the technology has broken down along a familiar framework in American politics, dividing into two camps: pro-regulation versus pro–free market.
On the one hand, you have researchers like David Robinson, a senior safety leader at OpenAI, who after resigning from his position two weeks ago wrote that “the future depends on the wisdom that Silicon Valley lacks.” Joining him are tech industry leaders like Bill Gates, who recently warned that “AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that cause a billion deaths.” This camp argues for greater government oversight over AI, and for AI companies to proceed more cautiously.
On the other hand, you have people like President Donald Trump, who has called demands for AI regulation a “hoax.” He has led an equally loud chorus, which includes tech leaders like Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, who argue that concerns about AI are overblown and disingenuous, that AI leaders like Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are eager for regulation so that they can box out competition, and that pumping the brakes on AI amounts to government meddling in the free market.
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Both sides are operating under an inadequate framework. Recently, on Meet the Press, Gates said, “There’s never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools.” He’s right, and that’s why the structures we use to govern a private industry, or even a public utility, don’t fit when it comes to AI. Rather, the appropriate structure is how we govern violence in a society, and those governance structures have been developed over millennia. Understanding their evolution might save us from a future of violence and chaos that looks much like humanity’s past.