The House Intelligence Committee released a warning about "Black Swan" AI risks. Black Swans are unpredictable events with massive consequences. The committee believes AI might cause one. They also believe existing safeguards won't help.
Bipartisan lawmakers agreed on something. That's the real Black Swan event.
The warning says AI advances too fast for current regulations. No specifics on what catastrophe they're preventing. No timeline for when the robot apocalypse arrives. Just vibes and concern. Lawmakers excel at concern. They've been concerned about the deficit for forty years while adding trillions to it. They were concerned about social media until they learned how to fundraise on it. Now they're concerned about AI, which means they'll regulate it roughly never.
Retail traders heard "Black Swan AI risks" and immediately started searching for ticker symbols. There isn't one. AI isn't a company you can buy. It's a technology embedded in thousands of companies, none of which you understand well enough to value. That won't stop you from buying Nvidia at the top again.
The committee warns that safeguards may not keep up with AI's advances. Safeguards never keep up with anything. Seatbelt laws came decades after cars killed tens of thousands. Food safety regulations followed waves of poisoning. Financial regulation trails every crash by exactly one crash. This is how government works. Something bad happens, then they hold hearings, then they pass a bill named after a victim, then the next bad thing happens.
The phrase "Black Swan" entered finance vocabulary in 2007. Nassim Taleb wrote a book about rare catastrophic events that everyone claims they predicted after they happen. Now politicians use it to describe things they definitely won't prevent but want credit for mentioning first.
If lawmakers truly believed AI posed an existential threat, they'd ban it tomorrow. They won't. They'll form subcommittees and hold fundraisers and let Silicon Valley do whatever it wants until something explodes, at which point they'll act shocked that nobody listened to their extremely specific warning about vague future risks.
Photo by Chittima Stanmore on Unsplash
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