The AI backlash is only getting started
The Economist’s June 25th cover leader argues the political backlash against AI is only beginning because the technology is only beginning: data-centre protests have scuppered nearly $100bn of US projects, around 40% of American voters tell pollsters they want AI banned from most industries, and more Americans say they would rather live next to a nuclear reactor than a data centre. The leader’s point is that the backlash is itself dangerous — starve the technology of compute or regulate it into uselessness and the productivity surge, the drug discoveries, and the frontier itself (ceded to China) go with it — and it prescribes four incremental, Deng-style pointers: spread the benefits so blockers have an economic stake, regulate hard where it actually matters (cyber, bio), measure everything (the AI-is-already-taking-jobs-and-raising-bills narrative is probably wrong, but unfalsifiable without better statistics), and use AI to make the state visibly better. Unpaywalled here; the HN discussion supplies the backlash to the cover story.
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