The existential questions of artificial intelligence regulation in Congress

Should we be alarmed by the acceleration of “artificial intelligence” (“AI”) and the “large language models” (LLMs) AI’s developers employ? 

Thanks to AI I can provide a short explanation of the LLM term: “Imagine AI as a large umbrella, with generative AI being a smaller umbrella underneath. LLMs are like a specific type of tool within the generative AI umbrella, designed for working with text.”

Clear? Of course not. The intricacies of AI and the tools it uses are the stuff of start-ups, engineers, computer scientists and the consumers feeding them data knowingly or unknowingly. 

TRUMP PRAISED BY FAITH LEADERS FOR AI LEADERSHIP AS THEY WARN OF TECHNOLOGY’S ‘POTENTIAL PERIL’

In the first Senate version of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” Senator Ted Cruz sponsored and the drafting committees accepted a 10-year ban on state legislatures laying down rules of the road for AI. Senator Cruz advocated for a federal moratorium on states enforcing their unique AI laws. Senator Cruz argued that states’ regulations could create a confusing patchwork of rules that could hinder AI development and adoption.

After much discussion and debate, the proposal was stricken from the Senate bill, which then went on to pass the Senate and House and was signed into law on July 4, creating in six months an enormous set of legislative accomplishments for President Trump as every one of the priorities he campaigned on was delivered via the OBBB. 

What about the concerns about AI? 

Very, very few essays or columns or even books leave lasting marks. One that did so for me was penned by Dr. Charles Krauthammer in 2011 and included in the magnificent collection of his very best work, “Things That Matter.”

In that collection is the brief column titled “Are We Alone In The Universe?”

Krauthammer quickly recounts the reasons why we ought not to be alone as an intelligent species in the universe, as well as the explanation of why we haven’t “heard from” any other civilizations in even our own galaxy. 

The answer, Krauthammer states, “is to be found, tragically, in…the high probability that advanced civilizations destroy themselves.”

Krauthammer credits Carl Sagan and others with this gloomy proposition, but it is Krauthammer who sums it up nicely;

“[T]his silent universe is conveying not a flattering lesson about our uniqueness but a tragic story about our destiny,” Krauthammer continued. 

“It is telling us that intelligence may be the most cursed faculty in the entire universe —an endowment not just ultimately fatal but, on the scale of cosmic time, nearly instantly so.”

But no gloom and doom for Krauthammer, only clarity: “Intelligence is a capacity so godlike, so protean, that it must be contained and disciplined.”

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“This is the work of politics,” Krauthammer concludes, “understood as the ordering of society and the regulation of power to permit human flourishing while simultaneously restraining the most Hobbesian human instincts.”

Krauthammer is right and Senator Cruz was correct to tee up the debate which isn’t over, only begun. That’s the “politics” part which is never-ending until the civilization ends. AI is indeed “godlike” in the promises its boosters make but profoundly disruptive of all of human history that went before it. 

Does it mean we are stepping off the edge of a cliff that destroyed all the other civilizations that went before us on distant planets from whom we will never hear a peep because they have run out their own string?

Impossible to say, but kudos to Senator Cruz for kicking off the debate. The conversation deserves much more attention than it has thus far received.  It’s too easy to simply go full “disaster is inevitable” mode, but some speed bumps —Cruz 2.0 in the next reconciliation?— would be welcome. 

Hugh Hewitt is host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America 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 broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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