{"id":1973,"date":"2026-09-13T07:19:26","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T07:19:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1973"},"modified":"2026-09-13T07:19:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T07:19:26","slug":"the-madness-of-the-anti-ai-crowd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1973","title":{"rendered":"The Madness of the Anti-AI Crowd"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In the course of these hebdomadal reports, I have often had occasion to mention Charles Mackay\u2019s 1841 masterpiece Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. <\/em>The title should be inscribed as a talisman somewhere in the homes of the credulous. Mackay\u2019s account of various \u201cmoral epidemics\u201d\u2014the South Sea Bubble, Tulipomania, Witch Hunting, etc.\u2014is amusing until one steps back and realizes that we modern sophisticates are just as susceptible to the sorts of \u201cfolly and delusion\u201d Mackay anatomizes as was any seventeenth-century Dutchman who mortgaged his house to purchase a single tulip bulb.<\/p>\n

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Certain insects undergo periods of dormancy before suddenly erupting in a destructive swarm. So it seems to be with society\u2019s appetite for panic. How long can we go without indulging in the catharsis of a panic? How many society-wide panics have we witnessed in the last few decades? There was the \u201cglobal cooling\u201d scare when we were warned that a new ice age was upon us. Then there was the \u201cglobal warming\u201d scare, which is still going strong. \u201cSome say the world will end in fire\/Some say in ice.\u201d Al Gore is going with fire. Chicken Little warned about a \u201cpopulation bomb\u201d in which untold multitudes would precipitate mass starvation and lead governments to force sterilization upon their polyphiloprogenitive charges. Now we are being warned about a terrifying birth dearth. I can imagine that, should a new Charles Mackay arise, such episodes would be included in an updated edition of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I do hope, however, that should a latter-day Charles Mackay be vouchsafed to us, it will be someone with a forensic, not to say cynical, state of mind. For the follies Mackay laid bare were essentially organic, self-generating affairs. Perhaps they were manipulated by unscrupulous actors in their evolution. But they depended for their initial fuel mostly upon those old standbys, human greed and what Mackay called the \u201cimitative and gregarious\u201d instincts of man.<\/p>\n

What is novel in many of our current perturbations is the behind-the-scenes interventions of, in many cases, malevolent, foreign actors. The extraordinary popular delusions and madness of the COVID crowds is a case in point. Four or five years on, we have largely forgotten the mask-wearing, social-distancing, economy-blighting harridans of both sexes who acted as the enforcers of the COVID hysteria that China bequeathed us. It will soon be the same as the windmill-championing net-zero lunatics who have worked assiduously to dismantle Western prosperity. Are you surprised that China, Russia, and the Arab states eagerly abet the Greta Thunbergs of the world?<\/p>\n

The latest delusional entertainment is the \u201cAI-is-the-Antichrist\u201d brigade. Two things happened last week to make this new panic snap into focus. First, frenetic socialist loudmouth Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar, chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (yes, really), want to impose a moratorium on what they call \u201cartificial superintelligence.\u201d And what if the AI companies of the world ignore them and persist? Sanders and Casar want the state to come down on them with draconian force. \u201cEntities,\u201d they write, \u201cshall be subject to the corporate death penalty, and persons shall be subject to not more than 20 years in prison, which is similar to existing penalties related to unlawfully developing nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s that chuckling you hear backstage to the left? Why, that would be the tittering of Chairman Xi and his posse of Chinese AI developers. Bernie Sanders is doubtless one of their favorite American politicians.<\/p>\n

They are also fond of renegade software engineers like Jacob Coxon, whose story brings me to my second point. Coxon caused a firestorm last week when, after a couple of months, he quit his job at AI giant Anthropic. Why? Because (said he) he was worried that AI might destroy the world. Companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, he said, \u201care racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.\u201d Gee whiz. \u201cThese will soon be superhuman systems,\u201d Coxon skirled, \u201cthat can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Rating-hungry talking heads like Anderson Cooper lapped this up. \u201cIf it bleeds, it leads,\u201d you know, and what could be more sanguinary than the impending obliteration of humanity by machines or some souped-up abacus? I loved the CNN chyron: \u201cEx-Anthropic Researcher: AI could kill us all by the end of the decade.\u201d Remember, this \u201cex-Anthropic researcher\u201d is a 27-year-old former junior employee who was with the company for some eight weeks. Even the Washington Post<\/em> recoiled from the panic. \u201cAI Hysteria Jumps the Shark\u201d ran as the title of their editorial. Indeed it does, and WaPo was quite right in noting the link between hysteria, on the one hand, and calls for government intervention and regulation, on the other.<\/p>\n

The commentator David Friedberg cut to the chase when he noted that, with the panic over AI, we are \u201cin another trust-the-experts moment\u201d similar to the Karen-maxing moment of COVID. Anthony Fauci told us that COVID would kill everyone unless we had ourselves injected with poison, covered our faces, and stayed indoors by ourselves while the economy shut down and grandma died alone.<\/p>\n

Commentators from Elon Musk on down are describing the AI-government-regulation shuffle as a \u201cpsy-op.\u201d I think they\u2019re right. A chap called Kevin Bass has followed the trail and connected the dots. It\u2019s an elaborate operation whose end is to hamper American technological innovation.<\/p>\n

Two parting thoughts. Some commentators act as if the advent of artificial intelligence is something toto genere<\/em> novel. It is not. Back in the seventeenth century, Descartes promised that using his new scientific method, man would make himself \u201cthe master and possessor of nature.\u201d He envisioned all manner of wondrous things from the development of science-based technology. \u201cScientia potentia est<\/em>,\u201d said Francis Bacon, \u201cKnowledge is power.\u201d He was right, and Descartes outlined the rudiments of the techniques that would make good on that promise.<\/p>\n

From this perspective, AI is not a departure from mankind\u2019s toiling in the garden of natural knowledge but an extension of that knowledge. It promises breathtaking power, as do the technologies that gave us the internal combustion engine, electric and nuclear energy, nanotechnology, and software, to name just a few items on the menu of technological innovation. These techniques are powerful, which also means they are potentially dangerous. But think of how much they have benefited mankind. Advanced countries around the world are racing to develop and enhance AI. I hope that politically motivated luddites like Bernie Sanders will not stymie America\u2019s capacity to be at the forefront of this inevitable technological progress.<\/p>\n

Which brings me to my concluding thought, courtesy of Ronald Reagan. \u201cGovernment\u2019s view of the economy,\u201d he noted in the mid-1980s, \u201ccould be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.\u201d St. Paul told us that when we were children, we had to do with childish things, but that when we grew up, we should put aside childish things. It is childish to let our enemies define our fears. China and others, abetted by our own administrative state, have been assiduous about doing so. Let us hope we have put such juvenile susceptibilities behind us.<\/p>\n

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