My guy Pete Earle is out in the WSJ talking about AI regulation fears. #1266423, #1275136

The similarity/historical comparison he draws to Edison-Westinghouse and electricity is pretty cool. It was a technological fight (Direct current vs alternating current) but also a my-business-vs-his-business regulatory/rent-seeking fight.

And government taking sides in dynamic, competitive markets are usually bad ideas... safety is cool, but nobody knows enough to stop/regulate/prevent. better leaving it alone.

[Edison's] anti-AC publicity campaign worked to convince the public that AC was more deadly than DC. Electrical engineer Harold P. Brown, with assistance from Edison and his company, electrocuted animals using AC in public demonstrations. The use of an AC system for the first electric chair—which Edison actively encouraged—hardly hurt the message.

This is where public choice theory earns its keep. Rent-seeking doesn’t require corrupt businessmen scheming with corrupt politicians. Edison could have sincerely feared high-voltage electricity and preferred regulations that impaired Westinghouse. Safety and self-interest didn’t have to compete for space in his head.

The spectacle of artificial-intelligence executives traveling to Washington to warn government about the technology they’re building belongs to the same tradition as the so-called war of the currents.

"Competition promotes the discovery of what nobody sitting in Washington or even in today’s leading AI laboratories knows to look for."

TLDR:

Electricity was dangerous. AI may be dangerous in ways considerably harder to manage. The next transformative technology will carry risks of its own, and some of its pioneers will likewise find themselves sitting across from legislators and explaining what must be done to keep people safe.

Write the rules too early, and those unknown competitors inherit a regulatory structure designed around the firms that arrived before them.

ungated via his tweet: https://x.com/peter_c_earle/status/2103264235522240597