Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is concerned the U.S. is falling behind China on artificial intelligence development while Congressmen are too antiquated to understand and regulate the tech properly.
During an interview with Politico, Cruz expressed his hope that the U.S. wouldn’t fall behind its rival China on AI innovation while gloomily warning that Congress “doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing” on AI regulation. Cruz sees a lot of hurdles ahead as lawmakers struggle with reining in the concerningly rapid development of potentially dangerous AI, while still allowing innovation.
Communist China aims to be the global AI leader. If that goal were achieved, Cruz cautioned, “that would be profoundly dangerous to the United States from a national defense perspective.” But yet he sees issues with potential congressional legislation.
“To be honest, Congress doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing in this area,” Cruz told Politico Editor-in-Chief Matt Kaminski during a tech seminar. “This is an institution [where] I think the median age in the Senate is about 142. This is not a tech savvy group.”
While Cruz did note that hesitation on regulating tech can be beneficial, fostering more innovation, Politico noted, he certainly aims for Congress to know “what we’re dealing with” before starting to regulate AI.
That balance of freedom and government regulation isn’t such a concern in Europe, Politico cited Cruz. “I think Europe historically has been far less concerned with creating an environment where innovation can flourish,” the senator said.
With Communist China forging ahead on AI development and regulation, including AI in its military, Cruz said, “I believe that we need a comprehensive strategy for dealing with China, much like we had under Ronald Reagan for dealing with the Soviet Union and for ultimately winning the Cold War.”
If China were to be the world’s AI leader, “that would be profoundly dangerous to the United States from a national defense perspective, but also certainly from an economic perspective,” Cruz concluded.
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