Democrats certainly learn from past mistakes.
After watching President Bill Clinton let the internet grow without federal rules, Democrats want to control artificial intelligence — and if need be, to kill it in the crib.
The only question is, where?
The executive order issued by President Joe Biden would have turned AI into a federal hand puppet serving the public policy goals of unions, educators and leftist activists.
But President Donald Trump reversed it, closing that path.
Now Democrats are looking to blue states to regulate AI instead, balkanizing its development under a hodgepodge of state rules.
That’s why Trump is pushing to place AI under federal jurisdiction.
He’s aiming to preempt state authority, thus avoiding a European Union-style AI quagmire here while protecting America’s national security position vis-à-vis China.
But Trump’s efforts are not going well.
In 1996, as the internet age dawned, Clinton declared that “the private sector should lead” its development.
Under his policy, the web “develop[ed] as a market-driven arena, not a regulated industry.”
Clinton’s approach meshed with those of congressional Republicans: Their 1996 Telecommunications Act established federal control over interstate service, with limits on liability exposure.
Today’s mobile communications miracles, with thousands of apps serving users on millions of phones, is a legacy to Clinton’s pragmatism.
Biden’s AI legacy would have been the opposite.
His EO, among the longest in history, imposed a federal top-down, command-and-control regulatory approach.
It required AI models to undergo extensive “impact assessments” before going forward, and “post-deployment performance monitoring” as well.
America’s AI would have been forced to reflect Biden’s “dedication to advancing equity and civil rights” by advancing “racial equity and support for underserved communities” and by improving “environmental and social outcomes.”
Now, with Biden out and Trump in, the AI traps have moved to the states — with California, of course, and Colorado taking the lead.
California has long wielded its economy — the fourth-largest in the world — in a tail-wagging-the-dog approach to push political and social change.
It’s thrown its economic weight around to make all US businesses meet California’s standards, such as its stringent CAFE auto fuel-efficiency rules.