from the the-dumbest-and-cruelest-people-imaginable dept
Republicans are at present attempting to drive by way of an enormous and merciless new laws bundle that may impose historic cuts in public providers to the advantage of the nation’s richest assholes. The invoice will add $3.8 trillion to the deficit over a decade and contains a limiteless variety of main hand outs to the wealthiest people and largest companies.
One key a part of the invoice is a proposal to ban all AI oversight over the following decade. That is a part of the so-far profitable GOP effort to destroy all federal client safety, company oversight, environmental protections, and public security oversight. Sadly the U.S. press hasn’t achieved an excellent job illustrating what this implies for all the things from public well being to nationwide safety.
The wealthy assholes and companies pushing for this have an issue. If you happen to kill federal client safety, states could rush in and fill the void. You noticed this occur in areas like internet neutrality and privateness. Courts have repeatedly dominated that if the federal authorities abdicates its duty for issues like client safety, it may possibly’t then flip round and inform states what they will do.
So to stop states from doing primary company oversight the GOP has needed to get inventive.
For instance, to try to cease particular person states from regulating AI within the wake of federal apathy, the GOP is together with provisions of their large invoice that may attempt to ban states from receiving their share of $45 billion in broadband grants in the event that they have interaction in any oversight of AI giants within the subsequent decade. Any oversight. Even bare-bones environmental requirements (see: Elon Musk’s xAI air pollution drawback in Memphis, or related considerations about Meta’s AI information heart environmental impression on elements of Louisiana).
The concept was proposed in early June by Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and since then each the Home and Senate have taken steps to codify it into the proposed invoice.
“States that refuse to impose a moratorium won’t get these {dollars}. Amba Kak, co-executive director of AI Now Institute, an unbiased analysis institute, stated the change may go away states in an uncomfortable dilemma, selecting between broadband {dollars} and the ability to guard their constituents from AI hurt.
“I can think about that for lawmakers, Republican or Democrat, whose districts depend on BEAD funding for broadband entry to their rural communities, it’s actually an odd discount,” Kak stated.”
A few of what was initially within the gargantuan, ugly-ass invoice has been jettisoned after the Senate Parliamentarian discovered they violated Senate norms and the legislation. However the state and federal ban on all AI oversight stays considerably intact.
Granted something achieved by way of reconciliation could be undone by way of reconciliation, so a “ten yr ban” isn’t written in stone. And there’s some indication that the thought’s architect, Ted Cruz, is struggling to realize full Republican help for the ploy as he tries to string the needle. Hopefully which will end result within the proposal being watered down and/or killed.
Nonetheless, it’s silly and dangerous and opens the door to a whole lot of potential issues.
As we famous beforehand, these broadband funds had already been awarded. States had already spent years rigorously crafting their fiber funding plans on the premise of awarded funds. Now, in the event that they try oversight of an AI trade that’s proven itself thus far to be amoral and reckless, they threat harming their very own communities by leaving them caught with out broadband entry.
Not like many previous U.S. broadband subsidy packages, a whole lot of thought was really put into this infrastructure invoice program (BEAD, or the Broadband Fairness Entry and Deployment Program). It’s a significant motive its taken so lengthy. They tried to precisely map broadband entry. Many states tried to make sure that some huge cash went to well-liked community-owned options, and never simply large telecoms. It took years of collaboration between states, feds, and native communities to collectively develop these plans.
However there are additionally a number of layers of irony for long-time Techdirt readers. The GOP’s plan is harming their longstanding allies in “large telecom” (who threat dropping billions in subsidies) to the advantage of their supposed ideological enemies in “large tech.” They’re additionally possible delaying the implementation of a broadband grant program they spent most of election season whining about taking too lengthy.
Republicans are additionally busy attempting to redirect billions of BEAD program {dollars} to their more and more incoherent billionaire benefactor Elon Musk. It’s all simply totally, transparently buffoonish and corrupt, but our press (and even many coverage folks) appear intent on normalizing it.
There are nonetheless a whole lot of shifting elements. Once more, a number of horrible points of the invoice violate the legislation and Senate procedural norms and could also be jettisoned. Others, just like the plans to promote 250 million acres of public land, are getting no scarcity of bipartisan blow-back. There are nonetheless probabilities for the invoice to get higher or a lot worse; however even any kind of “greatest” case state of affairs might be a traditionally corrupt (and traditionally lethal) piece of gargantuan shit that totally fails to serve the general public curiosity.
Filed Underneath: ai, automation, bead, broadband, corruption, fiber, oversight, regulation, ted cruz
