What the right is getting wrong about AI

If you don’t want to hear all the handwringing about artificial intelligence, you will not just have to stay off ChatGPT. In reality, you’re going to have to be off the grid, entirely.  Indeed, from media chatter to water cooler dialogue, AI has become the new societal obsession, with a healthy combination of concern from many about what it will mean for their jobs to complete adoration from others blown away by the capabilities of generative AI technologies. Almost no one sees what ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini can do without being impressed at the speed, power, and transformational capability of the technology.

While most of my focus is on the investment side of the sector, and the mistakes many are making in addressing the new technology, there is a profound political error evident, as well. And as with many things in this highly polarized and tribalistic era, there is more than one mistake being committed. As a lifetime conservative Reaganite and free marketeer, I would suggest that many on the right are erring on one side of the horse, only to get up and fall off on the other side.

AI capabilities have provoked fear, some of it hysterical and irrational, but some understandable and reasonable, largely about the disruptive impact on many aspects of the job market. Various studies have suggested that AI could push unemployment up to 20% or higher as generative technologies make obsolete what many workers have been trained to do. History suggests that these predictions are absurd, and that disruptive shifts, while absolutely provoking change and “creative destruction,” also create new opportunities.  There will no doubt be those who find themselves displaced, and this will reinforce the vital need for a highly dynamic economy, laser-focused on mobility, retraining, adaptability, and the needed flexibility that has defined the American workforce through 150 years of paradigmatic transformation. 

Some have stated that we must resist AI with all our might due to the impact it will have on the workforce, openly advocating a rejection of efficiency and technology because of the threat of “creative destruction.” This protectionism must be rejected, not only due to its partiality, its impracticality, and its open rejection of progress and advancement, but also because it is wholly unnecessary on its own merits. From the industrial revolution to the digital revolution, a market economy changes the ways humans can be of service to one another, but when it comes to the infinite needs and wants humans have, we will never find ourselves without work for humans to do.

Those on the right wanting to dismiss market principles out of fear for AI impact on jobs are dismissing their own principles and the clear lessons of history.  In so doing, we inevitably ignore what should be our greater priority—fortifying a culture of dynamism and flexible retraining to accommodate shifting needs. In short, advocating for deep intervention into AI to keep it from impacting the jobs market is a catastrophic error that we should reject.

However, the inverse of this heavy interventionist error is perhaps even more alarming. At its core, the large language models that drive this new AI revolution require intellectual property. These require power and electricity. They invite complexity and challenges when it comes to privacy, child protection, and a host of other issues in an online world that were clearly underestimated the last time we went through this with the social media revolution. As much as people on the right should not advocate “shutting down AI” in the interest of economic interventionism and protectionism, we also should not adopt a careless and reckless carte blanche approach that ignores laws already on the books about intellectual property theft, that ignores the vital need to safeguard children, that ignores the damage done from fraud and misrepresentation through AI fakes, and that grants crony waivers to standard zoning and regulatory laws that all other economic actors in society must abide by.

AI is a good and useful tool to drive a more productive society. Many have and will make a lot of money from it. But the big tech players behind this do not have a right to monetize AI efforts by playing under different rules than the rest of us. The companies behind AI development should innovate and monetize just as any other company should innovate and monetize, but not free from the rule of law that punishes IP theft, that enforces zoning laws, that honors the wishes of local municipalities around energy resources, and that refuses to grant immunity to those who harm others via technological carelessness (especially children!) 

Public figures with tremendous AI experience and familiarity like Tim Estes have proposed a simple blueprint for conservatives that will allow the right to stick to its core principles of condoning market innovation while not succumbing to the political temptation to give the AI industry special treatment. We should implement a “Do No Harm” standard for the industry. Allow LLM’s and hyper-scalers to grow, invest, and monetize, but not with blanket protections that allow them to sidestep laws against child endangerment, IP theft, or other infringements on the public interest. Let market forces dictate what goods and services will be produced in the marketplace, but not by ignoring laws on the books, or creating irreparable damage to the reputations of innocent people subject to AI smears or misrepresentations.

The conservative solution to the AI moment is not fear or rejection, but it’s also not “head in the sand” complacency. The conservative philosophy has long held in tension the beauty of a free market perspective, wedded to the rule of law, in service of the common good. We can do two things at once. In fact, the conservative mission requires it, and AI is no exception.