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Putting aside the moral reasons we are taught not to copy one's work in grammar school, there is the practical concern your classmate may know as little as you do — or less. Such a dilemma feels relevant today, as mere days after Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed nationalizing America's artificial intelligence companies, President Trump flirted with the idea of doing the same.
Let's hope this idea remains a brief flirtation rather than moving toward marriage, because giving the government a seat in the Big Tech boardroom is a surefire way to imperil America's dominance in this space, and set a precedent that could derail our broader economy.
For starters, consider how this would be viewed by global investors, who are currently pouring staggering, unprecedented amounts of money into American AI companies and infrastructure. If those investors see a risk of their shares being diluted, or that the corporate leaders to whom they entrusted their wealth could see decision-making authority reduced, it will naturally increase their appetite to look elsewhere.
For those considering support for President Trump's take on this issue, let’s not suffer from short memories. It was only a handful of years ago a main grievance from conservatives was how tech companies censored speech during the COVID pandemic — often at the behest of the government. The fallout outraged Americans to the point where Meta's Mark Zuckerberg eventually issued a mea culpa for caving to administration pressure. That moment marked a victory in the culture war by figuratively kicking the government out of the tech sector and reasserting our right to free speech. Why would we now want to let the government back in, particularly on a technology as vital as AI?
Let's also remember the U.S. presidential administration will eventually change. Even the most ardent of President Trump's supporters should acknowledge allowing the government to start calling the shots will end poorly. And it is hardly a leap to say that, by taking an ownership stake, they will exert this authority. To quote from Senator Sanders's op-ed, "[t]he federal government would have the power, through its voting shares and an equal representation on each company's board, to block decisions that hurt our citizens and to push for policies that help them."
As Senator Sanders makes clear, he supports this idea precisely because it allows the government to dictate outcomes. Perhaps those directives will lead to AI models promoting a woke, leftist ideology. Or maybe there will just be bad business choices that force companies to make unprofitable compromises at the expense of further innovation.
After all, if the government were capable of profitably steering America's top corporations, why were they unable to do so when the Obama administration took a stake in GM? By the time Treasury's investment was off the books, taxpayers had been hosed for over $10 billion. Do we really believe government bureaucrats who couldn't steer GM to profitable returns have the vision to steer something as complicated as AI? If they could, it begs the question of why they are working in government in the first place.
Recalling further back, the opposition to "Hillary Care" — Hillary Clinton's public-option healthcare plan — was largely driven by the fear that once the government integrated itself into the insurance market, it would claim an unfair advantage by kneecapping competitors through regulation or by using taxpayer money to subsidize its own losses. The same concerns should apply to allowing the government to infiltrate the tech sector today.
Finally, let's remember that as lofty as valuations are for many companies operating in this space, the artificial intelligence game is going to have both big winners and big losers. We cannot allow a situation where taxpayers are on the hook to bail out a lengthy stream of failures that will inevitably result as this technology rapidly evolves. Not to mention that, when one of these 'nationalized' companies does fail, it would carry a particularly perverse incentive for taxpayer intervention if the public feels they have income tied to its success.
President Trump started his administration by taking the correct, hands-off approach to AI. He should stick to his guns, otherwise taxpayers will 'Feel the Bern.'
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Jon Decker is executive director of American Commitment and a senior fellow at the Parkview Institute. As one of America's leading "supply-side community organizers," he launched the Committee to Unleash Prosperity in 2015 on behalf of Steve Forbes, Larry Kudlow, Arthur Laffer, and Stephen Moore and served as its executive director for eight years.
Previously:
• In Congress, it's always 'Blame Someone Else Day'