AI Disarmament?!

What a real moral leader would say about AI

AI disarmament?

What a REAL moral leader would say

Pope Leo has urged AI “disarmament,” saying:

“ . . . merely regulating it is insufficient; it must be disarmed . . . What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating.”

A “more active political involvement” is an indecent euphemism for: the coercive power of the state. And since that’s police-backed bureaucrats issuing diktats to entrepreneurs and engineers, yes, they are more than “capable of slowing things down.” (The “everything” that “is accelerating” part refers to the accelerating ability to solve problems and create value—which is the normal result of a free, unregulated economy.)

Rather than listening to a man whose stock-in-trade is superstition, dogma, and authoritarianism, consider what a genuine moral leader would say.

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We are witnessing the rise of a new power, a power of inconceivable dimensions: the power of AI.

Like all the transformative inventions before it, AI can be used for creation or for destruction, to serve human life or to crush it.

From the wheel to electricity to computers, all great advances can be and partly have been put in the service of evil.

And so it is said that AI can be used to enslave all of humanity. Or even extinguish human life on this planet.

Faced with this terrifying possibility, only one conclusion can be drawn.

The decent, humane peoples of the earth must accelerate their development of AI--in order to be certain that the good maintains superiority over the evil. The free world must not lose this epochal “arms race” to the death-worshipping Mullahs, the state-worshipping fascists and communists, or to the personal- power-worshipping Russian despot.

We can debate how to accelerate AI. We can debate whether the best path is government funding or (as I hold) de-regulating the entrepreneurs. But we cannot debate the urgent, all-consuming need for the U.S. and its allies to stay ahead—far ahead—in this new arms race.

To hold back and watch the ascendancy go to Russia, Iran, or China would be monstrous.

“Disarm”? Any call for slowing down would be obeyed by the good and laughed at by the evil.

Should the police carry nightsticks and slingshots while facing machine-gun toting criminals?

Should we have abandoned the Manhattan Project and let the Nazis develop the bomb?

Arms are not the problem, evil systems are.

Only those who care about morality would listen to a call to retard the development of AI. Regimes that slaughter their own citizens have no concern for morality.

Treaties with tyrannies have never worked. Cease-fires are broken. Hamas’ October 7th massacre came during a cease-fire. Soviet Russia cheated on every treaty it signed.

And now, after the massive bombing of Iran, after the crippling oil embargo on Iran’s oil exports, our president can’t even get the Mullahs to lie about their plans to build nuclear weapons.

The Pope’s pacifist encyclical is a call for the good to surrender to the evil.

In the name of all that is decent, humane, and morally right, I say:

Damn the Torquemadas, full speed ahead.