The Democrats Push AI Panic Ahead of the Midterms

A short take

The side with all of the power wants control of AI because, of course, they do. That should not be that surprising. We should be very worried if they do get their hands on it, however. They could use it as yet another tool of mind control, not to mention thought policing and surveillance.

They showed us what they would do when Biden took power, and they used the FBI to police speech on Facebook and Twitter.

But all of a sudden, arriving like an October surprise in September, Barack Obama and other Democrats have decided to panic about AI.

Trump, of course, as he always does, shrugged it off, much more worried about China and Russia and other countries zooming past AI as our country slows down.

The Democrats know Gen-Z is very skeptical of AI and that selling fear of it might motivate them like nothing else.

They know they need Gen-Z to turn out, and maybe this is finally their deus ex machina ahead of November’s election.

It’s beginning to feel a lot like COVID and the masks. It’s also starting to feel like another battle in our ongoing Virtual Civil War.

Steve Bannon, who is usually aware of China’s threat, is joining Bernie Sanders to protest the rise of AI from the standpoint of America’s workers losing jobs, which is valid.

The recent panic reminded me of another time the Democrats were in power, and everyone was suddenly scared about what would happen at the turn of the millennium.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief after Y2K went bust. And then 9/11 happened, and we realized we’d been afraid of the wrong thing.

Yet, there is a genuine fear about how fast AI is moving and where it might go. The tech bros put their faith in Trump in 2024, fearing what the Democrats would do if they got hold of it.

It all started when one of Anthropic’s employees quit and left a post on X that said: “AI will kill all humanity over the next few years.”

A more sober take, as usual, from the All In pod with David Sacks, who is Trump’s AI go-to source:

The media’s response is the tell. Of course they need a panic ahead of the midterms.

The whole thing spiraled into insanity on X, and even Elon Musk seemed to agree that AI is dangerous; it should be slowed down, and yes, it could kill us all. He clarifies that here:

We do have to proceed with caution, of course. We’re speeding into something we might not fully understand, but one thing I know for sure is that free America will be a lot less free if the Democrats take control of AI.

Even now, you should be very cautious about what you put into AI, what information you give it, and what thoughts you invest in that vast database of human learning. You are already being tracked. The AI learns from you and preserves your footprint. But as long as you’re aware of that, AI can be quite useful.

I’ve been using AI almost every day for months now. I first used Claude AI to build a contest form for my website. It was a revelation. In the 26 years I’d run that website, I’d never had a system that could finally take me to the next level of programming.

I used Claude again to help me find my biological grandfather. I’m planning to write a longer piece about that, so I’ll save it for another time, but I’ll say it took days and days of working with Claude, and this AI never gave up. Eventually, we found him. A one-in-a-million shot to find a guy who had disappeared without a trace from my mother’s life as America headed into World War II. It’s quite a story, but it would never have happened without AI.

I used AI to refinance my car loan. I use it to find a calorie deficit. I occasionally troubleshoot better headlines. I’m already at the point where I feel like I would not want to live without it.

Of course, AI is dangerous, and yes, there should be safeguards put in place. But the problem is the countries that might want harm done to the United States, for instance, aren’t going to slow down, so will America become a sitting duck or worse, a lame duck?

I will leave it to smarter minds to figure it out, but what I do know is that Barack Obama sending out word to all of the Democrats to center AI panic ahead of the midterms makes me even more worried.

For a long time, it was fear of “MAGA extremists.” Since they’re the ones picking up guns and shooting people, they can’t use that anymore to scare people.

I still trust the GOP to trust the smartest minds to help us out of this mess before it’s too late. The last people I would trust are today’s Democrats.