American voters have an issue with Artificial Intelligence. A Gallup poll last year showed that 80 percent of American adults think the government should regulate AI in some manner, even if it meant ending the wild west nature of the developing technology.
People are concerned, rightly so, that AI is going to replace people in several career fields. They are concerned, rightly so, that tech barons will use AI to replace workers on the cheap and turn decision-making over to the machines, a direct contradiction to the maxim that IBM established way back in 1979:
“A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.”
But this is not the first time that people and politicians have freaked out about the development of new technologies changing their lives.
The Waltz, 1810s: Becuase of how close the partners were dancing, the Waltz was corrupting for young women. In the 1830s, etiquette manuals still claimed the Waltz should only be performed by married women becuase it was immoral for anybody else to do it.
Trains, 1830s: Physicians of the time were concerned that traveling by train at the high speed of 30 miles per hour would dislocate the uteruses of women, disrupt menstruation, and destroy the human nervous system.
Anesthesia in Childbirth, 1840s: Religious objections to this were based on the concept that pain in childbirth was “divinely ordained punishment for Eve” and thus interfered with God’s design.
Sewing Machines, 1840s: Sewing machines were going to destroy tailors, a paranoia so fierce that a mob of them destroyed a sewing factory in Paris because of it.
Margarine, 1870s: The dairy industry actually lobbied to get protectionist tariffs on margarine, then convinced states to either ban it or require that margarine be dyed pink. The pink-dye requirement was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1898, but margarine bans lingered into the 1960s.
Telephones, 1876: The British resisted the implementation of the telephone becuase the robust network of messenger boys already existed.
Cars, 1890s: Britain required any “self-propelled road vehicle” to be preceded by a guy with a red flag. On foot. To warn horses and pedestrians. Thus defeating the benefit of even having a car in the first place.
Bicycles, 1890s: Women apparently were susceptible to “bicycle face” if they rode a bike. Uterine displacement also was resurrected as an excuse. Persistent riding of bikes led to “weakness of mind, general lunacy, and homicidal mania”.
Comic Books, 1950s: Comic books, allegedly contained covert depictions of violence, sex, drug use, and other adult fare within "crime comics", including superhero and horror comics as well, and that reading this material encouraged similar behavior in children
And that isn’t even inclusive of all of the moral panics. Books. Television. Video Games. Rock and roll. All of them saw moral panics and real concern about things that you and I now take for granted.
Most of the anger has been manifested toward the construction of new data centers. Nobody wants a data center in their backyard, a position that on its surface is reasonable.
But below the surface is the same type of NIMBYism that precludes the construction of nearly everything in local politics. Nobody wants to have a data center in their backyard. But the reasons for why are, as they often are, completely overblown. As the Editors of the National Review so eloquently put it:
the sheer scale of the opposition — and the speed with which it has coalesced — is redolent of a moral panic akin to those that attended the introduction of nuclear power or fracking or 5G. Bluntly put, the vast majority of the sensationalist claims that are made about data centers are nonsense. They do not use a notable amount of water. They do not tend to increase the cost of electricity. They are not unusually noisy. Indeed, compared with almost any other industrial project, they are astonishingly clean….
The moral panic over nuclear energy is one reason the US is so far behind in the use of clean energy and reducing dependence on coal-burning power plants. If the United States follows the lead of the anti-nuclear movement and kowtows to the anti-Data Center movement, the United States will be conceding the lead on AI technologies to China, a position that is not in the best interests of the country or individual Americans. Especially true when you consider the applications AI can have on weapons development, military strategy, engineering, and medicine.
In fact, opposition to the U.S. based data centers helps China so much that some people think that the opposition movement is a Chinese PsyOp.1
Opposition to data centers is wildly disproportionate to their actual impact. Yes, they use electricity, water, and land. But factories, warehouses, office parks, shopping centers, high-density housing, and every other type of commercial construction also use those same resources. The difference, however, is that data centers support the digital infrastructure modern life increasingly depends on, while generating investment, construction activity, and substantial tax revenue without the traffic, noise, and public-service demands that come with most other large developments. The real question shouldn’t be whether data centers have costs, but whether those costs can be responsibly managed. In most cases, they can and can be managed far more responsibly than yet another massive strip mall with acres of impervious surfaces.
AI is going to change the world. Just like the automobile, the airplane, and even the elevator did. The key is ensuring our country and our communities are not left behind, and that AI is used in a way that doesn't destroy our humanity. Those interests won't be served if local zoning boards and state legislators keep caving to a moral panic dressed up as environmental concern or if Congress regulates AI into a corner.
The panic will pass, like it always does. The question is whether the officials who signed the moratoriums will still be around to explain why they got it wrong.
Which, if true, would make it one of the more successful psyops in modern history: convincing American homeowners to organize against their own country's AI buildout by way of the local zoning board.