Victor Davis Hanson: The Sudden AI Panic Has a Lot to Do With the November Midterms

We’re about 40 days, close to 40 days, out of the midterm, and all of a sudden there’s been a melodramatic announcement that artificial intelligence could destroy the human race. I think everybody’s always accepted that remote possibility, and it’s been very popular in popular culture, such as “The Terminator” series. But why did all of a sudden we hear about it now?

And the answer is Jason Coxon, a minor figure that had worked in major AI companies, suddenly quit, and he announced that even the CEOs of those companies were worried that they were creating things that they couldn’t control, and that artificial intelligence would, on its own, be able to outthink humans and perhaps control the world, etc.

In “The End of Everything,” a book I mentioned, a theoretical experiment by the Pentagon, a computer simulation in which a missile was programmed to do anything that it could to protect itself to complete the mission. And when one of the programmers pushed the kill button, the missile turned on the computer screen. It wasn’t a real missile, but the simulated missile turned and went back at the person who pushed the button.

So, we’ve always known that that risk was there, but why was it so exaggerated right now? These CEOs, it was very interesting. If they’re so worried about the direction of research, why don’t they do two things? Why don’t they patrol, control, audit their own people?

It’s almost like saying, “I’m afraid that I’ll commit arson.” And if you’re afraid you’ll commit arson, then why don’t you take fuel away from that person or don’t ever touch gasoline? If you’re afraid that your company will make something that will destroy mankind, then don’t do it.

But if you say, “I still can’t control it,” then why are you opposing liability, legislation that says the makers of AI, should that AI product be used and be used to hurt people, they’re not liable? You would say, “What? Just make us liable. That’ll ensure that you can trust us because we might not trust ourselves.”

The other thing is they’ve called, and the Left has called, for international control. I’d like to say, if you look at the history of international control regulations, it’s not good.

The League of Nations, did that stop World War II? When Mussolini decided to go into East Africa, did they stop him from using the Suez Canal? Did they tell Japan, “You can’t go into Manchuria,” or to get out of China? Did they say to Hitler, “Don’t go into the Sudetenland”? They did. Did it do any good? No.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact, remember that? That was going to be a worldwide, by Sen. [Frank] Kellogg in the United States in the 1920s, a worldwide effort to outlaw war. How did that work out? Within a decade and a half, we were at war.

How about the Washington Naval Treaty? That was a very inspired, idealistic idea after World War I: Let’s stop the dreadnought race. Everybody will agree to make no destroyer, cruiser, battleship over a certain tonnage. Did Japan or Germany abide by the 35,000-ton limit on battleships? No. Did we? Yes. Did Britain? Yes. Did France? Yes. Did Mussolini? No. Did, as I said, Germany? No. Did Japan?

In other words, consensual societies do abide by international treaties. Nonconsensual societies do not.

How about the Versailles Treaty? Did that prevent another war? No. How about the Munich Agreement between Prime Minister [Neville] Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler? Did he abide by that when he said: This is my last territorial conquest in Europe? No. He invaded Europe about a year later.

How about the recent Paris climate accord? Has that reduced Chinese carbon emissions? No. They’re building two to three coal plants per month.

How about the United Nations Human Rights Council? Has that stopped the slaughter of Christians in Africa? Did that stop the ethnic cleansing and killing of Armenians in Azerbaijan? No.

So, international accords won’t work.

So, what is going on with all this melodrama? Why now? Why on the eve of an election? It’s not new. Let’s look at some of the end-of-days scares that we’ve had in the past.

When I was younger, in 1968, there was the Nixon-Humphrey campaign, and all of a sudden Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford professor, said we’re all going to be destroyed by overpopulation. He took the old Thomas Malthus worry in the 19th century of overpopulation. He wrote a bestseller called “The Population Bomb,” and it said there’s no way we can get enough fuel, food, precious metals … to feed this growing billion-dollar, billion-person population bomb. We’re doomed.

And it had a lot of bad effects. People started just to have one child. In Europe, they took it very seriously. The idea was have one child, adopt one. And now Canada has a 1.25 fertility rate. Europe is about 1.33, the EU.

It had disastrous consequences, and we now—we have more people on the planet than ever, and the per capita income of the world population is higher than when Paul Ehrlich wrote that book.

In 1983, there was a nuclear winter. We were all scared. Carl Sagan, he was sort of like Paul Ehrlich, a professor. He was a cult figure. He said that we’re gonna have a nuclear exchange, and when we do, the nuclear dust will blot out the sun, and we’ll all die.

That was in relationship to the Soviets. For a long time, they had short-range missiles threatening Europe. Ronald Reagan said that’s not allowable, to bully Europe. We’re gonna put Pershing II missiles to counteract your missiles.

There were some standoffs, and all of a sudden—and what was gonna happen within a year? There was going to be the 1984 reelection effort of Reagan. So, all of a sudden, the Left said: Nuclear winter, nuclear winter, we’re all gonna be doomed.

Hollywood made a movie, “The Day After,” showing mushrooms dotting the Kansas landscape. A hundred thousand people. It was just a complete hysteria.

Then we had climate change, or rather global warming went to climate change.

In 1992, who wrote “Earth in the Balance”? Candidate Al Gore during that election cycle. What was his thesis? Well, there was global warming we were worried about, but he was saying that heat is a pollutant. Everybody’s dangerous or deadly as industrial waste or ozone or whatever.

And he said we have only a decade or a decade and a half, and the polar bears are going to die. The coral reefs off Australia are going to erode. Icebergs are going to melt in the Antarctic, and the Arctic Ocean is going to be too warm, and we’re going to have difficulty navigating these icebergs. The endless—you couldn’t get a place on the ocean. Barack Obama’s house in Hawaii, built, I guess, apparently, will be inundated.

And then it didn’t happen. Didn’t happen.

But Al Gore and [Bill] Clinton were elected.

In 2016, remember “Me Too”? Harvey Weinstein was using the old casting couch of Hollywood producers to coerce sex from actresses so they could get a role. It started out legitimately, as did climate change worries, as did nuclear bomb worries, as did AI worries.

But that didn’t last long. All of a sudden, careers as varied as Garrison Keillor, Brett Kavanaugh, Al Franken, the senator, everybody, if they did anything in their past, stole a kiss, patted someone too long, hugged somebody, half the country was worried over the last 30 years had they said an off-color joke. There was a climate of paranoia.

And it was right during the what? The 2016 election.

And who promulgated it? We’ll get to that in a minute.

And then it died. Why did it die pretty soon? Because Joe Biden in 2019-20 was a candidate, and he was going to be the only viable candidate for the Left. They were terrified of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg is too far left. And Joe Biden was handsy, a euphemism for touching women, hugging them too long. One of them, Tara Reade, came forward and said she’d been sexually assaulted.

And of course, Bill Clinton then earned renewed scrutiny. What did you actually do, Bill? And after you left office, we hear about the [Jeffrey] Epstein connection, we hear about women on your plane, and all of a sudden it disappeared, Me Too.

Then I could go on with the COVID lockdown and the paranoia that ended up probably killing more people, destroying millions of lives economically, ruining education.

I could go into the George Floyd paranoia after the death of George Floyd. Thirty-five killed, $2 billion in property damage, 1,500 police officers, five months of looting, arson, destruction.

What do all these things have in common? Well, they’re melodramas. They’re psychodramas. All of a sudden, people take a legitimate issue and they start to use it to achieve a political aim.

It’s no accident that the AI hysteria is happening right before the election.

And usually, in all of these cases—the Carl Sagan nuclear winter, the Al Gore climate change, the Paul Ehrlich population drama, the BLM ginned-up rioting after George Floyd, the opponents of Donald Trump who wanted to lock down the economy—they’re usually used by the Left.

And finally, let’s be frank. When they’re all over, Carl Sagan is a household name, and he’s very wealthy. Paul Ehrlich is a household name, and he’s very wealthy. Al Gore starts out as any politician, supposedly very poor. He’s from an affluent family, and he’s now a near-billionaire.

And the BLM people who ginned up the George Floyd riots, they all retreated to plush homes, used those monies that were intended to be nonprofit funds for their own personal aggrandizement.

In sum, when you see a sudden epidemic, a melodrama, a hysteria, just be very careful because the odds are it will be in an election year, it’ll be ginned up by a so-called left-wing expert, and when it’s all over, that left-wing expert will be pretty wealthy.

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