Is Biden's Monday Executive Order Influenced by Something He Saw in Newest 'Mission Impossible' Movie?
The nine scariest words in the English language are as follows: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
When those words are effectively muttered by the octogenarian-in-chief, President Joe Biden, they’re not just scary — they’re reason to drop everything you’re doing and start sounding the alarms.
The latest example of that comes from the utterly asinine executive order that Biden signed today that’s meant to curtail the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.
Now, first and foremost, in a vacuum, yes, artificial intelligence has its potential pitfalls and well-founded concerns.
Issues such as potential job losses over AI automation, privacy issues, inherent biases and the murky legal arena that AI currently occupies are all genuine causes for concern — unless you’re the Joe Biden administration, apparently.
Team Biden apparently thinks the real problem with AI is some abstract and ineffable “danger” that requires extensive government regulation — because of course they do.
The next time Democrats see a problem that can’t be solved with Big Government overreach that will be the first, after all.
“AI is all around us,” Biden said before signing the order, per the Associated Press. “To realize the promise of AI and avoid the risk, we need to govern this technology.”
The executive order is set to require various leaders in the industry to report to the government and divulge all manner of information. If that’s not concerning enough, the AP’s description of this executive order is.
“The order is an initial step that is meant to ensure that AI is trustworthy and helpful, rather than deceptive and destructive. The order — which will likely need to be augmented by congressional action — seeks to steer how AI is developed, so that companies can profit without putting public safety in jeopardy,” the outlet reported.
That description and use of “deceitful” and “destructive” begs the question: Did Biden just watch “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One”?
For the unfamiliar, that movie features a villainous and omnipotent AI called “The Entity” that shares far more in common with HAL 9000 from “2001: A Space Odyssey” than actual AI.
Look, the malevolent and evil AI entity is a well-worn movie trope for a reason: Few things are scarier than peak human intelligence coupled with a distinct lack of humanity. It’s the “evil genius” trope taken to the nth degree.
Further adding to the concern that Biden and his staff have no clue what they’re doing and are just ramrodding more government overreach through (the executive order invokes the Defense Production Act), look at some of these comments from them.
“[Biden] was as impressed and alarmed as anyone,” deputy White House chief of staff Bruce Reed said in an interview, per the AP. “He saw fake AI images of himself, of his dog. He saw how it can make bad poetry. And he’s seen and heard the incredible and terrifying technology of voice cloning, which can take three seconds of your voice and turn it into an entire fake conversation.”
Hopefully, Reed or someone explained to the president that all of that stuff — the AI image of him and his dog, the bad poetry and the cloned voices — still require a human prompt. All the AI regulation in the world isn’t going to stop little Timmy from asking AI to create a picture of Joe Biden eating maggots, or whatever else the human mind can conjure.
Oh, and to answer the earlier question about “Mission: Impossible,” Biden was absolutely influenced by the film — Reed himself said so.
“If [Biden] hadn’t already been concerned about what could go wrong with AI before that movie, he saw plenty more to worry about,” said Reed, who had watched the movie with the president at Camp David, said. Worse yet, Reed specifically referenced a scene where “The Entity” sank a submarine and killed the crew members aboard — an impossibility by current standards.
The fact that Biden is seemingly allowing bombastic (but admittedly fun) action movies to dictate real-world policy is worrisome enough.
But the speed at which his administration is trying to force through this executive order might be even more concerning.
“We can’t move at a normal government pace,” White House chief of staff Jeff Zients said, regarding what Biden told him. “We have to move as fast, if not faster, than the technology itself.”
So just to set this straight: Biden clearly has no idea what dangers artificial intelligence actually present (rogue and sentient AI is so far from an actual real-world problem right now that it’s laughable), and he is trying to ramrod an executive order through at a non-“normal government pace” to address those wayward concerns.
What could possibly go wrong?
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