When I first came to Congress as a young staffer, an old graybeard type gave me a stern warning. “The purpose of this place,” he said, “is not to pass good laws. It’s to stop bad laws.” To be frank, it’s a lesson every freshman member of Congress or new staffer should hear.
Fast forward to 2023. This week, the Senate is likely to consider Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal’s and Missouri Republican Josh Hawley’s awkwardly named “No Section 230 for AI“ bill. If the purpose of Congress is to stop bad laws, there should be some sort of early-warning system and emergency shutoff valve for bad laws that deal with artificial intelligence.
You may have heard about Section 230 in the past. It’s an important section of an important law stating that if someone posts content on the internet, only the publisher of the content can be held liable — not the medium or tool that was used. For example, if I left a comment on a Taylor Swift YouTube video that said, “Taylor kicked my dog,” Ms. Swift could come after me for defamation — but she couldn’t sue YouTube.
Without Section 230, the internet would be a very different place. Enter that old axiom about bad laws. The Blumenthal/Hawley bill, dropped this week, makes a major change to Section 230. The bill would strip certain legal protections if a claim involves “the use or provision of generative artificial intelligence by the interactive computer service.” In plain English, if the company used AI software, it would face a brave new world of legal liability and would, theoretically at least, be held responsible in both civil and criminal court for everything done using that tool.
Blumenthal argues this will ensure that “consumers have the tools they need to protect themselves from harmful content produced by the latest advancements in AI technology.” No doubt a worthy goal. But there is a fat delta between intent and outcome. Hence Congress’s sacred duty to prevent poorly written or framed laws from making it to the president’s desk.
Conservatives have no love for Big Tech or any real desire to shield techies from punishing legislation. Silicon Valley has invited this ire upon itself through years of censorship, search-engine manipulation, and naked cheerleading for many of the goofier cause célèbres of the progressive Left. But the one thing conservatives dislike more is trial lawyers, and this bill would represent a massive carve-out for them as well as tech ambulance-chasers. The lawsuits would be cosmic in size, reaping bountiful payouts for a trial-law industry that is all but an arm of the Democratic Party.
We should also be careful about slowing down American companies that are working with the Pentagon on AI. Our military is in a tooth-and-nail fight with the People’s Liberation Army to integrate AI in the defense space. Whoever wins will likely conquer the next battlefield. Now the idea of armed artificial general intelligence should make everyone, from Beijing to Boston, wary if not outright paranoid. But like the similar debate around nuclear weapons some seven decades ago, if the employment of this terrible new tech is indeed inevitable, it should be America and her superior system of ethics and respect for the rule of law that leads the way. The debate should be about proper safeguards rather than bogging innovators down in endless litigation.
The surest way to lose a war to China, or even find ourselves in one, is to cede to them the AI space. The technology is a once-in-a-century advancement, one that will change societies and battlefields forever. We want America in that driver’s seat, not the Chinese Communist Party.
Ctrl+Alt+Del the Senate’s Bad AI Bill
3
0
06.12.2023
When I first came to Congress as a young staffer, an old graybeard type gave me a stern warning. “The purpose of this place,” he said, “is not to pass good laws. It’s to stop bad laws.” To be frank, it’s a lesson every freshman member of Congress or new staffer should hear.
Fast forward to 2023. This week, the Senate is likely to consider Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal’s and Missouri Republican Josh Hawley’s awkwardly named “No Section 230 for AI“ bill. If the purpose of Congress is to stop bad laws, there should be some sort of early-warning system and emergency shutoff valve for bad laws that deal with artificial intelligence.
You may have heard about Section 230 in the past. It’s an important section of an important law stating that if someone posts content on the internet, only the publisher of the content can be held liable — not the medium or tool that was........
© National Review
visit website
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Rami G Khouri
Mort Laitner
Donald Low
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
