[ExI] it hasn't yet...

[BillK]

On Sun, 8 Feb 2026 at 02:11, Gregory Jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> ...but it soon will be.
> I am out at sea with very little  bandwidth, so I talk and listen to other
> passengers, to see what they know about AI.  Some refer me to the former
> VPOTUS who explained that it is a fancy thing and is two letters.
> It occurred to me that AI isn't really politicized, yet.  But we can see
> how quickly things are moving.  We in this forum recognize that AI might
> solve all our problems or kill us.  As that realization overtakes the
> general population, they will look to political leaders to tell them if it
> is a good thing or a bad thing.  Subtlety and nuance go out the window.
> Science out, politics in, reality pushed aside, truth unavailable.
>
> It hasn't happened yet.  But it will.
> spike
> _______________________________________________
>


I put your suggestion to the new Claude Opus 4.6 AI.
Claude pushed back immediately, saying that politicians are already paying
a lot of attention to AI and new regulations.
He did agree that the general public was less informed about AI, and this
could be a problem.
See below -
BillK

Claude Opus 4.6 -

There's an interesting observation in your premise, but I'd push back on
the inference somewhat. By 2025-2026, politicians have actually paid
considerable attention to AI — the EU passed the AI Act, the US has issued
executive orders on AI safety, the UK hosted an AI Safety Summit at
Bletchley Park, China has implemented its own generative AI regulations,
and Congressional hearings on AI have been frequent. The gap you're
noticing on the cruise ship may reflect less that politicians are ignoring
AI and more that public understanding lags behind policy conversations
happening in capitals. Politicians often respond to lobbying, industry
pressure, and expert advisors well before an issue saturates general public
awareness.

That said, your core question about politicization and AI innovation is a
genuinely important one, and there are several dimensions worth thinking
through.

One major risk is that AI becomes a partisan wedge issue, where positions
calcify along ideological lines rather than being guided by technical
reality. You can already see the contours of this: on one side, concerns
about bias, surveillance, and labor displacement; on the other, concerns
about regulatory overreach stifling competitiveness. Once AI policy becomes
a tribal identity marker, nuanced regulation becomes much harder.
Legislation gets designed to score political points rather than to address
actual risks, and each change of government threatens to whipsaw between
deregulation and heavy restriction.

Geopolitical competition adds another layer. The framing of AI as an "arms
race" between the US, China, and Europe creates pressure to either loosen
domestic regulation to maintain competitive advantage, or to impose export
controls and research restrictions that fragment the global research
ecosystem. The US semiconductor export controls aimed at China are already
an example of this dynamic. While there may be legitimate national security
reasons for such measures, politicization can turn calibrated policy into
blunt instruments.

There's also the risk of regulatory capture running in both directions.
Large incumbents like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI have enormous lobbying
resources and may welcome regulation that raises barriers to entry for
smaller competitors — effectively locking in their dominance under the
guise of safety. Conversely, populist political movements might push for
restrictions driven more by fear and misunderstanding than by genuine risk
assessment, potentially throttling beneficial applications in healthcare,
scientific research, or education.

The EU AI Act illustrates some of these tensions concretely. It establishes
a risk-tiered framework that many consider thoughtful, but critics argue it
was designed with limited understanding of how foundation models actually
work, may impose compliance costs that push innovation to other
jurisdictions, and could become outdated quickly given the pace of
technical change. The challenge is that legislation moves on multi-year
timescales while AI capabilities shift in months.

Perhaps the most subtle risk is what you might call premature ossification
— political systems locking in assumptions about what AI is and how it
works at a particular moment, creating regulatory frameworks that become
obstacles when the technology evolves in unexpected directions. Imagine if
internet regulation had been permanently shaped by the assumptions of 1995.

None of this means AI shouldn't be regulated. The risks from unregulated
deployment — in areas like autonomous weapons, mass surveillance, deepfakes
undermining democratic processes, or concentrated economic power — are
serious. The challenge is whether political systems can develop governance
that is adaptive, technically informed, and resistant to the distortions
that come with partisan polarization and industry lobbying. The track
record of governments regulating fast-moving technologies is, historically,
mixed at best.

Your cruise ship observation might actually point to something important
though: if the public remains poorly informed, they become more susceptible
to panic-driven narratives or to complacency, either of which makes
thoughtful democratic deliberation about AI governance harder to achieve.

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