According to the big AI companies, this kind of ambitious and unconditional
government support is just what’s needed to achieve their aim of limitless AI
infrastructure expansion—which they assert will be necessary to reach the holy grail
of artificial general intelligence, and to do so before China does. Under this arms-race
logic, any restraint on corporate power is recast as an impediment to national security
interests and plainly unpatriotic—like blocking the Apollo program or the
Manhattan 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 technological
transformation, it’s that the promotion of national monopolies does not necessarily
lead to national competitiveness. Nor does it lead, seamlessly, to sustainable jobs,
enduring employment, wage growth, and innovation. While it can lead to great wealth
for some, it rarely guarantees the kind of mass national renewal that the tech elite and
their friends in government promise.
Read the full op-ed here.
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