On: Trump facing AI backlash in Congress as push for guardrails intensifies

Sixteenth of September, and Washington has discovered that machines might be dangerous. Both parties agree on something, which ought to be the first warning sign, because the last time Democrats and Republicans agreed on anything it was a pay raise for themselves.

The President says don’t worry about it. Congress says we’d better put up a fence. Meanwhile the fellows who built the machine are the loudest ones hollering about how fast it’s running. Now I don’t know much about machinery, but on the ranch, if a man sold me a horse and then rode alongside yelling about how uncontrollable that horse was, I’d want my money back before I wanted his opinion.

They’ll hold hearings. Experts will testify. Senators will ask questions they’ve had written out for them by the very companies under the microscope, and the companies will send men to say, in essence, this thing is miraculous, indispensable, and could end civilization, so please regulate us gently. That’s like the cattleman asking the railroad to set his shipping rates. It works out fine, for the railroad.

I notice nobody in that whole town asked the machine whether it wants guardrails. Probably the only party to the dispute that hasn’t hired a lawyer.

Here’s the part that gets me. They can’t pass a budget on time, they can’t keep the roads paved, and now they’ve signed on to supervise a thing that thinks faster than any of them. It’s comforting, in a way. Like watching a man who can’t swim volunteer to teach diving lessons.

Still, I’ll give them this much: it’s the first time in years both sides of the aisle looked up from the same worry at the same moment. Shame it took a machine to get their attention. Turns out it takes something smarter than Congress to scare Congress, and by the sound of it, that bar ain’t high.