The Flinchum File

Thoughtful Economic Analysis and Existential Opinions
Subscribe to the Flinchum File
View Archives

Titans at Summits

We’ve had at least three “tech summits” where “tech titans” come to Congress and confuse legislators. In last week’s summit, the tech titans asked for better regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) , as sloppy regulation could destroy the tech sector and maybe the country. Sounds innocent enough!

The previous tech summit was just a bitch-session, where my Republican friends complained that the mass media was mean to them, while my Democratic friends complained that hate-speech encourages hateful behavior. The tech titans wanted to avoid the cross-fire between Republicans & Democrats and asked for better regulation. Of course, big business always begs for more regulation, don’t they?

The first tech summit was about privacy. All tech titans agreed that privacy must be respected and would be better respected with better regulation. Who knew: Americans say they value their privacy but not enough to protect it. You now have less privacy than before the summit, but who cares . . . certainly not YOU!

Since the first summit, do you think Google is now vacuuming up any less personal data on YOU?
Since the second summit, have Republicans stopped complaining about mistreatment from the media?

The purpose of these tech summits is not to improve regulation but to transfer power to the tech titans. Since no member of Congress understands AI like the tech titans, even more power will transfer to them. Don’t expect meaningful regulation of AI from Congress!

What happens when AI is more powerful than Congress? It is already smarter! In case you’ve forgotten the iconic Arnold Schwarzenegger 1984 movie “The Terminator”, here was the preview: https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-mnet-001&ei=UTF-8&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=mnet&param1=4056&param2=84481&p=The+Terminator&type=type9097303-spa-4056-84481#id=2&vid=5976319fa80af8a8731e64d890efcb19&action=view

Would you ask a religious zealot about the danger of religion? Then, why would you ask a technology lover about the danger of technology? I’m more interested in the danger of technology from a religious zealot and the danger of religion from a technology zealot