OPINION:
Artificial intelligence is transformational, but its consequences are not the biblical event Pope Leo XIV warns of.
The creative destruction instigated by AI should not motivate governments to enforce European-style labor market regulations or confiscate wealth to impose socialism, as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont advocate.
Just as water and steam power, electricity and airplanes permitted humans to overcome physical limitations, artificial intelligence is accelerating the work of the mind by performing tedious tasks quickly and extending our intellectual reach.
Recently, an OpenAI model solved a mathematical problem known as the unit distance problem without human assistance. This puzzle has stumped human mathematicians for the past eight decades.
Not every child can have a jet plane to achieve flight, but many will soon have access to this kind of AI intellectual accelerant.
Nvidia is building AI-dedicated personal computers in alliance with major manufacturers such as Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft and HP, with prices likely at the level of a high-end gaming device.
However, we are all subject to AI abuses pioneered by social media: the intentional cultivation of compulsive use and behavior destructive to oneself and others.
AI has caused alarming disruptions in labor markets, especially for entry-level and midlevel white-collar workers.
Although the impulse to limit AI is compelling, we must be mindful of competition from autocratic states.
Ukraine has developed a cloud-based system to quickly map battlespaces using satellite imagery, radar and frontline feedback, enabling strikes on enemy targets within minutes. It hardly takes imagination to anticipate that the combatant that accelerates such systems with autonomous AI will win the day.
Pope Leo and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei could conceivably persuade Western nations to ban military application of autonomous AI, but they cannot protect the West from Chinese and Russian aggression.
Overregulation is stifling American competitiveness.
Big Pharma is increasingly turning to China for cutting-edge drugs because Chinese researchers are cheaper and faster, thanks to greater government support and a regulatory environment that permits more rapid drug testing and approval.
Within the White House, debate raged over the recent executive order requiring that AI companies submit their high-powered models for a one-month review before release.
AI alarmists wanted much stricter and longer processes that could ultimately replicate our drug review system.
What a great way to hand AI leadership to Beijing.
When the Democrats get back in power, or a Republican who actively courts organized labor support succeeds President Trump, it is easy to foresee regulations that would limit the labor market turbulence instigated by AI — featherbedding rules similar to those Republicans are now imposing on railroads.
Another great way to cede economic dominance to China.
AI has been with us only a short time, and it is being blamed for labor market disruptions by multiple sources: overhiring and then retrenchment after the COVID-19 shutdowns; supply chain disruptions from wars in Ukraine and the Middle East; Mr. Trump’s tariffs and his deportation program.
Thanks to Mr. Trump’s immigration policies, the pace of hiring that U.S. labor force can sustain is about half the 127,000 monthly jobs added during the last five quarters of the Biden presidency.
We are now seeing evidence that deportations and stricter legal immigration rules reduce job opportunities for Americans because immigrant workers often complement rather than substitute for the skills of domestic workers.
Businesses have been puzzled about how best to apply AI to improve productivity, but it is not extinguishing the demand for workers.
A LinkedIn analysis found 640,000 AI-related job postings from 2023 through 2025, but the skills employers seek are changing.
This year, the first AI native graduates are leaving universities. Most companies are hiring again at the entry level, but new graduates with AI literacy are at a distinct advantage.
AI is empowering small businesses.
It permits modestly sized enterprises such as 85-employee By the Way Bakery in Pleasantville, New York, to choreograph its supply chain responses to new orders — scheduling shifts, acquiring supplies, arranging shipments and so forth — in a manner that rivals the precision of the American Ballet Theatre.
Mr. Sanders worries that AI will wrongly serve billionaires, but it often tilts the competitive landscape in favor of scrappy entrepreneurs such as bakery owner Helene Godin.
According to a March survey by Citizens Financial, 84% of firms with 20 to 99 employees planned to use AI in the second quarter, and 91% of businesses with more than 100 employees reported that it was already boosting their productivity.
Regulation is required to curb the abuses AI shares with social media, but not to govern the pace of its build-out.
If we tax it or seize a government ownership stake, as Messrs. Newsom and Sanders would do, we will surely slow its benefits and deny access to those firms least able to navigate the bureaucracy: small businesses.
Competition and markets, not ministries, would best regulate AI.
• Peter Morici is an economist and emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland, and a national columnist.
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