Much has been made recently of Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” To some its “beauty” lies in the tax breaks and cuts to social programs promised to fiscal conservatives during the run-up to the election. To others, it’s a caution light, a warning about short-sighted objectives (campaign promises) achieved through means that have potentially untoward, long-term consequences.
Supplemental to its more existential threats, AI-driven social surveillance will certainly affect privacy and security.
The economics of the bill are simple enough: As U.S. revenues continue to fall short of expenditures, budget deficits will eventuate — and this will occur in spite of any applied tariff revenue or belief that increased domestic manufacturing will offset loss of revenue from tax breaks.
Moreover, as budget deficits occur, trade deficits will continue (as has been the case since America left Bretton Woods in the 1970s). The latter foster the U.S. dollar’s status as a reserve currency and function to attract foreign capital to purchase U.S. Treasury securities needed to finance America’s budget deficits. As the annual budget deficits mount, so will the nation’s already staggering $36 trillion debt. And this increased foreign debt obligation will detract from America’s economy as the debt service on the ever-expanding public debt continues to rise.
This cycle will continue: trade deficits caused by budget deficits cannot be fixed with tariffs, only a curb on the root cause – excessive government spending — will accomplish this. And that is not in the cards on either side of the aisle.
A recent assessment of the BBB by the Congressional Budget Office bears out the economic logic above. The tax provisions would increase the federal deficit by $3.8 trillion over the decade, while the changes to Medicaid, food stamps, and other services would tally a much smaller $1 trillion in reduced spending.
Skeptical Republicans such as Senator Rand Paul have problems on several fronts, including worries that it will pile onto the nation’s already $36 trillion debt.
Yet, the economics is not why the bill (as it currently stands) should not be passed. Congress has been passing (fiscally irresponsible) budgets like this one for a long time. The displeasure with the proposed legislation lies with its treatment of “AI” — Artificial Intelligence — including a 10-year ban on state regulation.
The problem with deficit spending is that it is fiscally unhealthy for the U.S. and, over time, could be deleterious to the nation and its people. But Artificial Intelligence could be a direct threat to the nation because (as yet) we don’t know enough about it or how it actually works, and we certainly don’t have sufficient experience with it — at least, that’s what the experts say — including one of its creators.
Possible Problems with AI
As Artificial Intelligence grows more sophisticated and widespread, voices warning against the potential dangers of AI grow louder. “These things could get more intelligent than us and could decide to take over, and we need to worry now about how we prevent that happening,” said Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI” for his foundational work on machine learning and neural network algorithms. In 2023, Hinton left his position at Google so that he could “talk about the dangers of AI.”
Yoshua Bengio, often referred to as one of the “godfathers of AI” and more than 1,000 tech leaders urged in a 2023 open letter to initiate a pause on large AI experiments. As early as 2014, Physicist Stephen Hawking told the BBC that “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”
Questions about who’s developing AI and for what purposes make it all the more essential to understand its possible risks. Several potential dangers of Artificial Intelligence should be of concern to all Americans.
AI can be difficult to understand, even for those directly involved with the technology. This leads to a lack of transparency for how and why AI arrives at its conclusions. These concerns have given rise to the use of “explainable AI,” but we’re still some distance from transparent AI systems becoming commonplace.
Behavioral manipulation using AI algorithms is an easily recognizable danger. In fact, this concern has become a reality — politicians already rely on AI-driven platforms to proliferate their views.
Supplemental to its more existential threats, AI-driven social surveillance will certainly affect privacy and security. China’s use of facial recognition technology in offices, schools, and other venues is telling. Besides tracking a person’s movements, the Chinese government may ultimately be able to gather enough data to monitor (and even anticipate) a person’s activities, relationships, and political views.
Authoritarian regimes are going to employ it. But how will the West respond, and what constraints do we put on it?
It has already been shown that data and algorithmic bias exists, so if AI is developed by humans — and humans are inherently biased — what are the limits — the controls? AI biases are a subtle, hidden threat to society, and it goes well beyond gender and race.
If companies refuse to acknowledge the inherent biases baked into AI algorithms, social inequality could result. They may unwittingly compromise their hiring initiatives through AI-powered recruiting. The idea that AI can measure the traits of a candidate through facial and voice analyses remains potentially compromised by racial biases, possibly reproducing the same discriminatory hiring practices businesses claim to exclude.
And as is often the case, technological advancements are harnessed for warfare. When it comes to AI, the military is keen to implement it. Yet, in a 2016 open letter, over 30,000 professionals, including AI and robotics researchers, warned of the risks in AI-driven autonomous weapons.
Finally, there is the ubiquitous concern that AI will progress in intelligence such that it becomes sentient. Alleged reports of this phenomenon have already been cited — a former Google engineer has stated that the AI chatbot LaMDA was sentient and spoke to him just as a person would. Could it, therefore, function beyond human control and against us?
“I believe that the rapid progress of AI is going to transform society in ways we do not fully understand,” Geoffrey Hinton stated. “And not all of the effects are going to be good.”
Proceed with caution, Mr. President.
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