Bernie Sanders and AOC’s Bad AI Bill

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Last week, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders unveiled a bill that would pause AI data-center growth until Congress passes a “framework” to regulate the technology.

What would that framework look like? It would ensure that “the wealth generated by those [AI] companies is shared with the people of the United States.”

But as Danny Crichton points out, “AI companies already do this: their employees pay income tax, the companies pay corporate tax, the data centers pay property taxes and utility fees. A moratorium until the gains are ‘shared’ implies taking an even larger slice of the pie.”

Also on the Sanders/AOC wish list: preventing job displacement. “Their word choice is sneaky: job displacement means job change, not job loss,” Crichton writes. “Even if America’s economy had extensive net employment growth, that would not meet the standard to ‘prevent job displacement.’ The simple moving around of workers would be enough to keep data center growth checked.”

Read more about the bill and why it would be a disaster for the industry.

American science is mired in a Great Stagnation. But the biggest problem isn’t a lack of federal funding—it’s “talent identification,” writes Michael Gibson.

Fortunately, American science may soon get a boost in this area, with President Trump’s nomination of Silicon Valley financier Jim O’Neill as head of the National Science Foundation, which directs federal funding of nonmedical R&D.

Gibson worked with O’Neill for several years administering the Thiel Fellowship, which gives young people $100,000 to drop out of college and pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. The fellowship boasts an exceptional “hit rate”—former fellows have gone on to start companies collectively worth more than $500 billion.

Gibson offers five suggestions for how O’Neill could use his gifts for spotting entrepreneurial talent to improve the NSF’s grant-awarding process. Read here for more.

In The Primate Myth, novelist Jonathan Leaf argues that human beings have more in common with animals like horses and elephants than with primates. In fact, he argues, humans are so unlike primates that they shouldn’t be considered in this order of mammals at all. “The hazard of seeing people as similar to chimps, in Leaf’s view, is that we will regard their faults as inherent in ourselves and hence ineradicable,” Nicholas Wade writes. But Wade is not convinced. “Unfortunately, we are stuck with chimpanzees as our closest relatives, however violent and uncouth we may find them,” he observes.

Read Wade’s review.

“Even with AI, garbage in is going to mean garbage out.”