According to the big AI companies, this kind of ambitious and unconditionalgovernment support is just what’s needed to achieve their aim of limitless AIinfrastructure expansion—which they assert will be necessary to reach the holy grailof artificial general intelligence, and to do so before China does. Under this arms-racelogic, any restraint on corporate power is recast as an impediment to national securityinterests and plainly unpatriotic—like blocking the Apollo program or theManhattan Project (both of which, AI boosters insist, are worthy historical analogies).
But if there’s one thing we should have learned from past eras of technologicaltransformation, it’s that the promotion of national monopolies does not necessarilylead to national competitiveness. Nor does it lead, seamlessly, to sustainable jobs,enduring employment, wage growth, and innovation. While it can lead to great wealthfor some, it rarely guarantees the kind of mass national renewal that the tech elite andtheir friends in government promise.
Read the full op-ed here.
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