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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Politicians across the country acknowledge that the president’s overt war on Los Angeles and California, while not wise on the surface, benefits the Foxy Führer by distracting the media and Americans from the evil contained in the holy grail of his One Big Beautiful Bill.
With its passage by the House – ostensibly a budget, but larded with such a plethora of policies beneficial to the president’s billionaire buddies as to make ordinary people gag.
One of the worst of these is Section 43201(c), the “Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology Modernization Initiative: Moratorium” states:
“…no State or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act.”
Clearly inserted to protect the powerful Big Tech princes who fawned over Trump in the wake of his election, the proposed language spells out that “the primary purpose and effect of [the moratorium] is to remove legal impediments to, or facilitate the deployment or operation of, an artificial intelligence model, artificial intelligence system, or automated decision system.”
This would pre-empt all existing state legislation – rushed into place as potential dangers of unregulated A.I. to society became apparent – from crashing robo-taxis to the existential threat to jobs for every profession from screenwriter to truck driver, and bulldozes state efforts to tackle deep fakes, biased and faulty algorithms, and the escalation of privacy violations and identity theft.
And block any restrictions on an already out-of-control industry for at least a decade.
Endangering humanity for the benefit of all who envisage giddy profits from the explosion of the industry.
Including the president who is raking in money from Big Tech support and from his ignoble fascination with cryptocurrency.
Before the ascension of Trump, Ro Khanna urgently called on lawmakers and regulators to act immediately to ensure that the meteoric rise of artificial intelligence benefits all Americans.
And that it doesn’t emulate the catastrophes of the no-holds-barred globalization that gutted the working and middle classes in recent decades, disastrously widening the wealth gap. Left unchecked, A.I.’s warp speed evolution could precipitate currently unknowable calamities.
This lack of effective regulation puts everyone, domestically and worldwide, at risk – economically, socially, and politically.
Technology is extremely complicated, and the people pushing it often exaggerate the positives and downplay the negatives – that’s what lobbying is all about. And the bigger the potential payoff, the more baksheesh is lavished on decision-makers.
Of far graver concern: as A.I. becomes more powerful, it’s producing more incorrect information; more “hallucinatory” answers, and the newest reasoning systems from OpenAI and others are producing “information” that is more inaccurate more frequently.
A.I. is designed around probabilities, so consequently the results are de facto unpredictable. Chatbots hallucinate – that’s what developers call their darlings’ meltdowns when they produce wildly neuro-divergent responses.
When cornered, the A.I. companies claim not to know why, but most thinking Americans already know the answer: Garbage in, garbage out.
Machine learning, from the early fiction of Isaac Asimov to today’s Silicon Valley tech incubators, can’t tell truth from fiction.
A.I. systems “learn” from massive amounts of data, an increasing percentage of which is slanted or just plain incorrect, complete with hate speech and outright lies, and may be from personal data harvested without consent.
What A.I. is far more effective at than humans is purveying misinformation as credible and crafts increasingly seductive and successful phishing e-mails.
Will it rewrite history to reflect that the real Joe Biden was killed in 2020 and replaced by a robotic clone as the Confabulator-in Chief claimed recently on social media?
California legislation requiring a human driver on board self-driving trucks weighing more than 10,000 pounds transporting goods or passengers for at least five years passed overwhelmingly in 2023 but was vetoed by big business-backed Governor Newsom.
Now the DMV is moving forward on allowing the testing of self-driving commercial semi-trucks on public roads.
Replacing human drivers with A.I. would reduce labor costs but based on robo-taxi chaos even at low speed, there’s clearly a risk for freeway use of fully automated trucks, especially during extreme weather, hazardous conditions or with heavy or hazardous cargo on board.
A.I. is not only annoying and dangerous, its inaccuracies are also greasing a downward spiral in knowledge and education.
In May, Google, with its 27% rate of inaccuracies released its A.I. Gemini chatbot to children under 13, only alerting parents the previous week of its wholesale testing on American children of this app with acknowledged issues: “our filters try to limit access to inappropriate content, but they’re not perfect. Your child may encounter content you don’t want them to see.”
Breathtakingly appalling.
As one knowledgeable reporter put it, such a disclaimer is tantamount to saying we’re going to nuke your family, now that we’ve warned you, you can’t sue.
Recent reports have documented other platforms’ inability to protect minors from harmful and dangerous content and extreme ideologies including providing scenarios where kids can engage in explicit roleplay with “digital companions”.
Constituents need to call on their elected officials to demand that any provision that pre-empts states’ privacy and A.I. policies be stricken from this and any other bill pushing through Congress – before getting anywhere near the TACO-Toddler’s signing crayon.
And that they immediately pursue implementation of guidelines tracking their own concerns, perhaps augmented by the following recommendations proposed by the Center for American Progress, at whatever levels of government can and will act:
- preserve all state consumer protections surrounding A.I. in the federal privacy framework being developed by the House Energy and Commerce Republicans
- immediately address concerns about data privacy, algorithmic bias, and workforce disruptions by establishing and enforcing robust regulatory frameworks and ethical guidelines ensuring development and deployment of A.I. aligns with societal values, promotes inclusivity, and protects individual rights
- fully fund a Federal Trade Commission survey of the industry to understand third-party safety requirements from leading generative A.I. providers and provide clear guidelines on compliance with existing and future law
- develop a comprehensive A.I. strategy without delay to advance innovation and harness its benefits while simultaneously mitigating A.I.’s multifaceted risks
- fast-track a framework to effectively respond to potential risks and prioritize their mitigation
implement standardized structures to ensure consistent responsible use and deployment of generative A.I., by all applications highlighting user safety, transparency in policy enforcement, and accountability by all parties - require all safety provisions for all programs, apps, and web platforms meet or exceed minimum standards and are proactively upgraded to protect our children and the future
- crack down with eye-catching legal sanctions – at a minimum immediate take-downs and significant fines – when laws, regulations, or contracts are broken, or when an individual is harmed, to put developers, purveyors, and all invested parties on notice
A.I. undoubtedly brings economic benefits… but to whom?
Without comprehensive and stringent oversight, how can the dignity and economic security of working-class Americans be maintained as these changes unfold?
Returning to the moratorium provision, should all safety regulations on factories be removed in every state to enhance the shuddering economy for ten years?
Should all felonies be removed from state lists of criminal activities for ten years?
Additionally, given A.I.'s notoriously poor quality of editing which too often inverts or changes meaning, should it ever be allowed to operate unsupervised? Should Google algorithms be allowed to launch weapons?
Should Congress ban any regulation of A.I. for ten years?
Most emphatically not.
Instead, our lawmakers in D.C. should be actively supporting the expeditious roll-out and implementation of state laws so they can take the time to accurately address the myriad complications of federal regulations while acting immediately on aspects that endanger the country as a whole.
Please keep reminding your Senators that, even as the Manipulating Matador waves his scarlet cape of retribution at Angelenos and other protesters, they must not concede to his histrionics. They must focus on keeping Americans safe and our economy intact for the long term by immobilizing all aspects of this Bastardized Bloated Budget that are not in the interests of the 99%.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno who now resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
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