In a free market, there are 3 forms of regulation:
- The market itself. With choice and competition, there is a regulatory effect. Products that cause harm can die out. Milton Friedman said that in a free market the failures are just as important as the successes.
- The rule of law. When someone commits fraud, there should be legal recourse. The job of a legislative body is to determine which harms warrant government intervention, and how laws should be enforced when those harms occur.
- This is what most people consider regulation, as if the first 2 don’t exist. This form of regulation predicts something might be harmful or undesirable, so we will demand government licenses, permits, inspections, and other requirements intended to prevent harm. The downside is the chilling effect it can have on progress.
When we apply this to artificial intelligence, we must start with a definition. “Artificial” means not human. “Intelligence” is harder to define. If a child wins a spelling bee, are they intelligent or just good at retrieving data from memory? As you are reading this there is probably a device on the wall keeping you comfortable. You don’t have someone running into the room every 5 minutes with a thermometer. If a thermostat isn’t Artificial Intelligence, it can only be because we think it is not intelligent enough.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not a universal monopolistic entity. There is a fear that AI applications will control us and take our jobs, but depending on the definition we have lived with many types of AI for a very long time without those harms. Even if we restrict ourselves to current day “intelligent” technology, there are thousands of firms offering many more thousands of AI applications. There is a market.
The rule of law as it applies to AI is less mature. It is unclear whether new harms caused by AI have existing legal recourse. If existing law does not apply, legislative bodies have work to do in identifying harms not covered by existing law and prescribing appropriate enforcement mechanisms.
Calls for expansive regulation are often driven by expectations about AI’s future impact. Yet those expectations may themselves be overstated. While AI holds great promise for making life better, there may be an AI bubble that will burst. The book “AI Snake Oil” shows how overinflated expectations bring us back to the reality of what is achievable. In the industries I work in, there are no dark factories that replace all humans with automation. As I tell students every year, if you want to make the world better have a baby.
Any time you hear the term “regulation”, understand there are 3 forms of it. Do not jump to the last one as the only solution without considering the first 2.
AI development, being that it is unregulated right now, should be paused. We are rushing to become the biggest and the best in this field, which is what we Texans do obviously, but it can’t be denied that where these facilities are popping up the quality of life for the people around them goes down. I think deflating the “fears” people have about AI is not a good way to go about this topic. There are a few main companies driving the expansion of data centers and just looking at the owners of these companies you can guess that they do not have the best interest of the people and are only interested in how much money they will get by expanding and taking up our land. We should be Texas First and data centers are not that. With as many problems as we have had with our power grid you would think that we wouldn’t want to put any more strain on it. San Marcos is leading in the right direction, banning the data centers because they are aware of the strain it would put on their water sources. Why is the rest of Texas not following suit and why are these orders not coming from our Governor. I think this topic needs to be researched more again not just pushed to the side because people are “exaggerating”. It is a very real threat that many Texans want to stop and it seems that people’s beliefs on the matter are looked passed.
I agree with Kyra. A temporary moratorium on new AI projects should be immediately instated. I’m not against free-market capitalism but AI is being heavily subsidized and therefore isn’t free-market capitalism. The problem with America is we are becoming a corporatocracy. When you look at the effects data centers are already having on our strained water and electric infrastructure it is plain to see that it is harming the general public and needs at least some regulation.
In addition and as a point of fact, the US has 45% of the total data centers globally. Texas itself has about as many data centers as the entire country of Canada. How many more data centers do we need before we actually look at how they are effecting our citizens?
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AI is a massive problem. I’m a artist and these companies scraped my images and many others without my permission. It is a total violation of copyright law and personal liberty. Now these scammers go around with their photo splicing machine and do whatever they want with our images, using our work to try their hardest to replace us. AI is a cancer and needs to be stopped. The more anti AI you are the more likely I am to vote for you.
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I agree we should definitely be evaluating the permitting for utilities in these new data centers. However, I would immediately stop development of any new data centers for now.
We have vital business and life‑critical servers running out of existing Texas data centers. Some of the older facilities waste power and use open‑loop water‑cooling systems. However, most (all?) of the newer data centers use more power‑efficient hardware and closed‑loop cooling.
I think there’s a smart path forward that allows for new infrastructure in a responsible way that benefits most sides of the data‑center debate.
AI, like any other advancing technology, can be used for good or for evil. The outcome depends on the motivation for using it. And, responsible use requires understanding of what it is and how it is built. Like it or not, AI is here to stay. It’s impact on the environment is something every political candidate must address, but don’t expect a Libertarian candidate to address anyone’s personal beef with the industry.
Regarding personal artwork, if you don’t want anyone to mess with it, keep it off the internet. There are always people who want to cheat the system. Besides, a true Libertarian would probably not want to strengthen copyright and patent laws. Just my opinion, though.