At the last show of a U.S. tour for the Sex Pistols, lead singer Johnny Rotten famously asked the audience, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” The band was in the middle of self-destructing, as all good punk bands did, but the question loomed larger than the event and echoes throughout much of life today. Nowhere does it resonate more than in politics, where everything seems calculated, and you’re left wondering if these people actually believe in anything they espouse. The issue that comes to mind the most at the moment is artificial intelligence (AI).
There isn’t a candidate running who doesn’t have some opinion on the idea of AI — it’s either great or going to kill us all. Unfortunately, the “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE” crowd is the loudest and has gained the most traction. It’s really easy to scare the hell out of voters, and it’s very effective. But is it real?
I don’t believe for a second that most of these people genuinely fear Skynet wiping out all of humanity, or they wouldn’t wait until after an election to do anything about it. So, after the election, no matter who wins, you need to be prepared for the inevitable whiplash on AI, where everyone who swore we needed to “pump the brakes” or “stop the research” suddenly does…nothing. Either that, or they do things that end up empowering the already existing AI companies — that just so happen to be massively left-wing in policy and staff — and nothing else.
The most important issues in an election have a miraculous way of fading into the wallpaper after voters have their say. Remember the Green New Deal? While some of it was pushed through during the Biden administration — mostly the subsidies to liberal organizations and subsidies to left-wing causes — no one really even talks about it anymore. We were all about to die because of capitalism and the internal combustion engine; now even little Greta “Dutch Boy Haircut” Turdburglar spends her time whining about Jews and not the climate. What’s the point in “saving” your Palestinian pets if the world is just going to end in a couple of years?
Climate change worked for a while, then it didn’t. People noticed the 40 years of 5- and 10-year predictions of doom and gloom that never came to pass, and the filthy rich activists buying waterfront property while claiming sea level rise would wipe out these very same plots of land, and questioned their sincerity.
Now it’s AI that will kill us all. But will it?
If you were working on something and came to the realization that, if completed, it would quite possibly wipe out humanity, would you stop working or keep working while demanding someone in government stop you? It sounds absurd to even ask, but we have to ask because that’s where we are now with AI.
If these companies, worth trillions and standing to make trillions more, really think they’re seriously risking the existence of all life, wouldn’t they at least slow down? I hear stories of “billionaires building bunkers” to hide in when the Terminators start wiping everyone out, but I’d ask you a simple question: Would you create something that would make you rich beyond your wildest dreams and needs, but at the cost of living underground and eating canned goods with a group of people of your choosing? It sounds stupid to even ask, but I have to because that’s what people are saying.
Ironically, to the extent that bunkers are real, they are being built to protect rich liberals from liberal mobs who seek to seize their wealth and/or murder them, as bloodthirsty leftists always seem to do. Just like they’re creating AI they claim will kill us all, they’re funding political movements that, if successful, have a better chance of leading to their own demise than Skynet wiping us all out.
But none of this is real, and it will all fade after the election, no matter which way it goes. If these people actually believed it, they would talk of nothing else — what would be the point of anything else if we’re all dead?
The most logical explanation is what Chamath Palihapitiya posited: “So this has nothing to do with prosperity. This is a very simple political calculus. If you freeze frame the economy the way it is today, a handful of organizations that will disproportionately be able to affect the Democrats will win, they will capture the lion's share of the economic gains. And then they will help the Democrats win power. That's all this is.”
They’re all liberal, he says, and they will “fear” the public into supporting their absolute control of the next big thing, which will permanently fund the Left’s political activities against everyone else.
None of this is by accident. And only the particularly dumb politicians actually believe any of this. After the election, expect them all to return to occasional lip service on the issue and propose a regulatory scheme that will not prevent anything but competition for those huge AI companies. The whiplash will be fast, and it will be hard and can only be prevented by voting for solid, sane conservatives in the fall. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Derek Hunter is the host of the Derek Hunter Show on WMAL in Washington, D.C., and has a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and is the author of the book "Outrage, INC.," which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and the host of the weekly “Week in F***ing Review” podcast, where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on X at @DerekAHunter.
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