AMID a rising tide of warnings about the grave risks posed by unregulated artificial intelligence, including from leading figures in the American tech industry, the leader of an increasingly unfree world is typically insouciant. “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs,” Donald Trump declared in a Truth Social post this week, “is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the USA has that, in spades!”

Surely, that was an unnecessary reminder. After all, hardly anyone could be unaware of what that super-intelligence in the glittering Oval Office hath wrought, and perhaps the incorrigible optimists among us can still cling to the vague hope that his efforts will succeed in dismantling the American empire without irreparably damaging all life on earth.

“Concerning AI, when, in the History of Business, did anyone see the Leaders of an Industry call for Regulation that, strongly implemented, will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy?” the same high-IQ personality wonders in a longer post. As a six-times veteran, Trump knows a thing or two about bankruptcies but, either through ignorance or malice, misinterprets the existential worries of Anthropic and OpenAI executives, whose concerns may well be selfish rather than selflessly........

© Dawn