Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) delivered a speech Thursday morning about the impact artificial intelligence could have on the human experience and how conservatives should approach it.
Hawley spoke to a gathering of influential conservatives and took aim at the technologists for developing artificial intelligence in a way that will increase their own power and transform humanity.
“Not content with addicting our kids to their gizmos, our tech elites have turned with rabid enthusiasm to AI, hailing it as the greatest contribution to humanity, even claiming it will ‘save the world,'” Hawley said.
“Of course, it will also make them unconditional sums of money but only the most cautious articulate the real reason for the fervor: AI will reinvent human existence,” he added.
The rise of artificial intelligence over the past few years has rapidly divided policymakers, academics, and the public over whether, and to what degree, the technology poses a threat to humanity and what regulations should consequently be applied to control it.
Hawley, for his part, emphasized the threat artificial intelligence poses to working class people, arguing that the technology should be harnessed to improve their lives rather than to undermine their leverage in the labor market.
“Thus far the AI revolution is proceeding on transhumanist lines. It is working against the working man; his liberty and his worth. It is operating to install a rich and powerful elite. It is undermining many of our cherished ideals. If that keeps on, AI will work to undermine America,” Hawley said in a somber tone.
“We can achieve something different and we must. It’s time to change the game. It’s time to make AI work for people, not the other way around. Make it work to enhance our liberty, not destroy it; make it work to protect our livelihoods and not dismantle them,” he added.
Hawley spoke at the National Conservatism Conference, a high profile forum for Trump administration officials and populist conservatives to discuss ideas. One of the GOP’s most prominent populists, Hawley has spoken at several previous iterations of the conference.
As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hawley has increasingly set his sights on the potential dangers of artificial intelligence. He recently launched an investigation into Meta’s AI chatbot for sending suggestive, intimate messages to children. Meta quickly tweaked its AI policy to prevent those messages from happening in the future, a move Hawley took credit for earlier this week.
Conservatives have taken varying approaches to artificial intelligence since President Trump’s term began. The Trump administration worked quickly to remove the Biden administration’s AI regulations in order to promote American innovation and global leadership in AI. Likewise, Vice President JD Vance gave a speech in February making the case for looser AI regulations and the benefits AI will bring to American prosperity. The tech industry has pushed for looser AI regulations on the state and national level as AI continues to develop.
Some conservatives pushed for a state regulatory moratorium on AI as part of the GOP’s mammoth domestic policy legislation passed earlier this year. But the provision failed because of pushback from across the political spectrum after Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) introduced it.
Senator Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) filed the amendment to remove it from the bill which passed the Senate 99-1. Democratic lawmakers and activist groups also pushed for its removal on civil rights and consumer protection grounds.