All the talk about restrictions and laws to ostensibly ‘make AI safe’ is rather amusing.

Every single push to ‘make AI safe’ is actually an attempt to illegally prevent fair competition and create monopolies.

Here are the 4 main critical concerns with AI regulations and AI laws.

1st – Regulatory Capture & Creation of Monopolies

All current attempts to ‘pass regulations’ and ‘create oversight boards’ and ‘make AI safe’ are poorly disguised attempts to

1. Do regulatory capture
2. Create Monopolies
3. Prevent new entrants from catching up
4. Prevent new entrants from making breakthroughs that allow them to outpace incumbents
5. Entrench the existing leaders
6. Build ‘Corruption Portals’ i.e. Allow straight corruption from existing AI heavyweights and existing Big Tech to the US Government
   • All under the guise of ‘preventing AI from doing bad things’
7. Create Integration of ‘Church (AI companies) and State’ as opposed to having separation of Church (AI companies) and State

At this early stage of AI development, when world models are not even launched, and LLMs are hitting their limits, it is quite ludicrous to start suggesting regulatory capture and all sorts of laws to prevent newcomers from competing.

2nd – Empire Building and Empire Protection

As the US Petrodollar is under threat, and as US is no longer able to pull of Team America World Police type of ‘policing’ worldwide, the US needs something new and shiny to keep itself the Center of the Financial Universe.

AI is that something (at least for the moment).

In fact, AI is one of the few areas (others include space, quantum physics, nuclear fusion, robotics, genetic research) where America could find enough new innovation to extend its empire another 100 years.

All AI laws and regulations will be used by the US to

1. Protect its slowly declining empire
2. Expand its empire (if possible)
3. Attack the new dangerous empire-in-building i.e. China
4. Attack countries and unions that potentially could become empires i.e. European Union, India, BRICS, et al
5. Create (what America hopes are) insurmountable barriers for all other countries to compete in AI

We have already seen the very large number of moves America has made to keep China out of the AI race.

We have also seen that, rather surprisingly, China has managed to keep pace.

Innovation cannot be stifled by regulations and tariffs and laws if the other parties refuse to respect and honor them (and, quite frankly, they should not).

3rd – Stifling Innovation & Killing AI Democratization

The USA is making a lot of moves (including export restrictions) to try and prevent anyone other than the US from having access to the latest AI technologies.

Even within the US, the US Government is making a lot of moves to prevent anyone other than the new AI duopoly of Anthropic and OpenAI and the existing big technology companies (Google, Microsoft, FaceMetaBook, SpaceX) from having access to AI breakthroughs.

This, if successful, will massively stifle innovation. These moves will prevent AI innovation and AI democratization.

Believing that only people in 7 technology companies (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, FaceMetaBook, SpaceX) should have access to AI resources and AI technologies leaves out

1. Over 300 million people in the USA who might create or build or stumble upon some great AI product or innovation
2. Over 7 billion people worldwide who might have that big Steam Engine/Fire/Wheel moment which turns AI into something great for humanity

Regulations and Laws and Export Restrictions are one of the reasons we don’t have any ‘killer Apps’ for AI yet. Most AI products and applications are tools for builders within the AI ecosystem. There is not, so far, any AI powered product that has actually hit it big for the general population.

It is extreme hubris to assume that only 7 US companies – Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon – can create the new ‘Killer Apps’.

4th – Posturing AI as Too Big To Fail

Perhaps the biggest danger of creating all these regulations and giving 7 companies ‘favored nation status’ is that you now have all your AI bets on just these 7 companies.

You are now forced to make sure all/most of them survive because if 3 or 4 of them die then your entire AI movement stalls. Even worse, if 5 or 6 of them die, then you get one lazy monopoly/duopoly with no incentive to innovative or compete.

It may very well be that the End Goal is the formation of an AI Industrial Complex. That the Government (or some parts of it) think that favoring 7 technology companies is the best way to milk the AI market and to get bribes and paybacks. They might even be delusional enough to think such a setup is the best way for the US to monopolize the benefits of AI and to out-compete other countries.

These are very, very bad assumptions.

If all the benefits of a big technological revolution (and AI certainly seems like one) are limited to 7 existing mega-companies

1. These companies may not necessarily be suited for the rapid innovation and fast pace required in AI
2. These companies are very unlikely to be able to create the right products to make AI main stream
3. There is a very high chance AI innovation and AI development stalls

To complicate matters further, most of the large technology companies are more interested in dancing for shareholders and growing profits and share price, than in actual innovation.

What is the last breakthrough innovation from Facebook?

From Google? Has Google really done anything big since Search?

From Microsoft? Microsoft Office? Windows? Fast Follower of Amazon Web Services?

From Amazon? Anything since Amazon Web Services?

Closing Thoughts – There is Insane Corruption in the US at the moment and Regulatory Capture of AI will certainly be attempted

Many parts of the US Government are simply looking at AI as

1. Best way for Government to get lots of campaign funding and lobbying money and paybacks. Simply let the existing rich and huge technology companies dominate everything as they can give the biggest bribes
2. Instead of realizing that AI needs to be a brutal competition and only the strong should survive, the US Government seems to think ‘only the companies that can give us the biggest bribes should survive’

The US Government, in its rush to preserve itself as the biggest super power in the world, is hastening the pace of the decline of the American Empire.

At the moment I do not see any path for the American Empire to last as long as the great empires of the past. The British Empire and many other great empires lasted for approximately 350 years.

If we consider World War II as the start of the Great American Empire, we are only 80 years in, and already it seems that AI and/or China and/or Death of the Petrodollar will take down the American Empire.

Unfortunately, America seems to not realize that all the moves it is making might be accelerating the destruction of the pillars on which the Great American Empire was built. Trust is already destroyed. Petrodollar is on life support. Many other pillars that have supported the Great American Empire are under attack.