Regulate without Interfering with Innovation

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Congress is looking at ways to regulate artificial-intelligence models that have stepped up their capabilities. Leave aside the manufactured hysteria over the end of humanity within 10 years, as one disgruntled ex-Anthropic employee is pushing. We have, instead,

dozens of lawmakers are now touting new proposals to regulate artificial-intelligence models that have stepped up their capabilities.

Vermont’s socialist and nominally independent Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) piped up:

There is no question that Congress is far behind where we should be in addressing the impacts of this rapidly evolving and dangerous technology[.]

“Far behind where we should be:” what Sanders means is that government hasn’t taken regulatory control of the technology sufficient to suit his Big Government socialism. His regulatory regime—to be sure the regulatory regimes of either party—have no natural limits on how far to extend government’s regulatory control here, or in any other venue. The only limit government recognizes is the absolute natural limit of total control.

In the particular case, though, we get this from the increasingly far left Congressman Ro Khanna (D, CA). He’s pushing for

kill switches that could shut down AI systems when they behave dangerously.

Dangerously to whom, though? A kill switch would let an enemy nation hack in and shut down our AI as soon as that nation decides our AI is too dangerous to its ambition. Or to severely hinder our AI development in a close and existential race. Or just to cause massive trouble for us.

That’s the kind of idiocy that argues definitively against government regulation.

On the other hand, can we get regulatory guard rails on AI releases that would allow innovation to proceed apace prior to release? What would be the conditions for release? How would AI developers, much less innovators, fund their innovation programs without those releases occurring freely? What would be the natural limit to those release regulations? On that last, a hint: see above regarding regulations and natural limits.

An Iranian Ultimatum

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Ebrahim Azizi, Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Chairman:

No negotiations.
Until Iran’s terms are met, talks are futile.

Works for me. Let the bombing resume, fully, and add in broad-spectrum cyber attacks, both without letup until Iran is completely disarmed, its weapons production and nuclear weapons development facilities completely erased, and the terrorists running Iran are all dead.

Or the terrorists can send decision-makers to the negotiation site. They can be granted free passage to the site while the dismantlement continues apace. No letup until Iran’s government persons agree in writing to our terms.

Why Cryptocurrencies Are No Panacea

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In his piece concerning cryptocurrency scams and the difficulty victims have getting their money back even after the government has recovered the money from the scammers, the news writer had this statement.

[FBI] Agents have learned to painstakingly trace digital currencies, hop by hop, across blockchains—the decentralized ledgers stored on computers around the world that provide a public record of transactions between digital wallets.

This is why I won’t do anything with blockchain if I can avoid it. The very purpose of blockchain, proving permanently (at least until blockchain itself gets compromised) the provenance of transactions, makes it too easy for government to track what us ordinary Americans are doing.

Government doesn’t need to surveil me just because it wants to.

That Time Has Long Since Come

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The Trump administration wants a new rule that would achieve two ends governing how the 2030 census counts persons present in the US and how those counts are used.

The Commerce Department, which oversees the census, proposed not to count most immigrants toward the population used to apportion seats for the House, unless they have become citizens or hold permanent resident status. The proposed new calculation would exclude immigrants in the country illegally, which various analyses estimate total about 15 million.

And

In addition, the proposed rule would prohibit the Census Bureau from including race or ethnicity questions on the census form sent to all households, saying such data is “immaterial” to the constitutional mandate to conduct an actual population count. That would eliminate the most complete counts of the country’s Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American populations, ending a key source of information used in civil and voting rights enforcement.

The time for this rule has long since come, and it needs to be enacted promptly, with no further delay.

Illegal aliens have no business voting in American elections—they are not Americans, and as they’ve demonstrated by their illegal entry and subsequent insistent dodging of immigration authorities, they have no intention of becoming citizens or even legal residency. This is especially the case since for years, they’ve been able to voluntarily leave for their home contracts, collect a significant cash stipend on arrival, and then return to the US and enter legally.

It’s also plainly obvious that race or ethnicity have no place in our voting rules. This is borne out by our 14th Amendment and Supreme Court rulings explicitly eliminating race and ethnicity from voting special treatments. In the end, too, the only ethnicity that matters in eligibility for voting is American ethnicity. Beyond that, all American voters are the same under our Constitution and our statutes. Segregating us into groups for voting district construction would be irrelevant were the segregation not openly racist.

There’s Another Way, Also

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Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has submitted to Congress a number of California “climate” waivers for repeal under the Clean Air Act. This is a necessary step, and the Republicans in the House and Senate need to find the personal courage to take them up without delay and rescind them, an action that’s straightforwardly doable with simple majority votes in both houses and the President’s signature.

There’s another way, a parallel path, though, and it’s the responsibility of We the People and our businesses and enterprises.

One EPA waiver lets California mandate “zero emission” commercial vessels, including ferries and whale-watching boats. Another allows California to require that container ships and oil tankers docked at California ports plug into the state’s electrical grid or install technology to capture their emissions.

And

Another EPA permit lets California mandate that new lawn mowers, leaf blowers, chain saws, and other “small off-road engines” sold in the state must be electric.

And

[An EPA] waiver approved by the Obama team…allowed California to impose EV quotas through 2025.

It’s straightforward, also, for our private enterprises to adjust their supply chains and sales paradigms to avoid doing business in California altogether. These businesses need to do so promptly and broadly.