OPINION:
A new survey conducted by Rasmussen and the Heartland Institute has found 41 percent of likely voters between the ages of 18 and 39 years old are A-OK with letting artificial intelligence make policy decisions for American citizens.
No need to vote. No need for politicians. Just let AI do all the thinking — is this how it’s going to be in America?
Another 35 percent said AI ought to be given authority to control the militaries of the world. And another 36 percent said they believed AI could properly determine “the rights that belong to individuals and families, including rights related to speech, religious practices, government authority and property.”
No need for the Constitution either, it seems.
This is a dangerous path America is walking.
If these 18- to 39-year-olds represent the emerging leadership of this country’s political offices; of this nation’s education system; of America’s economy — of all of society — then it’s clear: Not only is the human touch poised to be removed from government, but humanity itself. There’s no stopping the AI train.
President Trump just signed an executive order to launch Genesis Mission, aimed at advancing scientific discoveries using AI. And this is both positive and important. America must stay at the top of scientific and technological advancements for national security reasons. China cannot be allowed to win the AI wars.
At the same time, the more technology is demanded, and the more artificial intelligence is created, the higher the risk of losing the core concepts of American Exceptionalism — the freedoms, the individual rights, the God-given liberties. AI requires data to grow; data collection, however, results in loss of privacies, leading to loss of constitutionally protected and cherished rights. The more society is funneled into a technologically based, one-size-fits-all, limited-choice box, the more society heads down a path of corporatism and collectivism. Technological advancement is a double-edged sword. On one hand is convenience; on the other, a disconnect from humanity.
Just look at the number of smartphone users who are unable to engage in normal, everyday conversation as a measure of how far we’ve strayed from the human experience.
And now America’s next generation of leaders wants to rely on AI to do all the hard work of leading?
It’s challenging enough to keep liberties intact when the schools teach kids to blame America for all that ails the world; to regard the free market as enslaving; to see the Constitution as racist; and to revere socialism and communism, but not capitalism.
It’s tough enough to maintain the framers’ visions of a democratic-republic and of a limited government in the face of Democrat-fueled surges of illegals at the border who come to America with expectations and demands that government, meaning taxpayers, provide for them, cradle to grave.
It’s difficult enough to keep politicians in their roles of humble servants so that they don’t grow the government to the point of becoming the be-all and end-all provider to the people, and in so doing, move this country toward communism, when the key to keeping citizens free — God — has been largely removed from the culture.
It’s hard enough to keep the lights of liberty burning brightly when a good percentage of the nation, mostly Democrat supporters, not only don’t critically think, but don’t really seem to think at all, preferring instead to knee-jerk and wail their way through life, responding to the calls of their party by setting fires in the streets and tossing bricks at police cars.
It’s bad enough that America has all these conditions to address.
Now add artificial intelligence to the mix, and technology that supplants thinking at all. That’s a situation ripe for control. That’s a scenario to be loved by a tyrant.
As Donald Kendal, director of the Glenn C. Haskins Emerging Issues Center at The Heartland Institute, put it in an interview, we are “sleepwalking toward a digital dictatorship.”
The solution isn’t to do away with technology or to stop the quest for AI dominance.
The solution is to teach the coming generation of American leaders in the pro-America, American Exceptionalism way to go, so that the AI that comes and the technology that’s developed will not become tools for oppressors because they won’t be programmed as tools to oppress.
Technology, as with anything, can be used for good or for evil. The difference is in the controller.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
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