Trusting the market on AI isn’t conservative. It’s dangerous

Originally published by Washington Examiner.

When confronting government excess, conservatives have long been clear: Cut back, deregulate, and let markets cook. However, they have also long understood that markets don’t always work for the everyday American. Conservatives traditionally enact laws that preserve the things we hold dear, such as protecting and promoting the nuclear family, ensuring livable wages for the working class, and maintaining the integrity of our national security.

For some (more within the libertarian ilk), the answer is simple: Trust the market, full stop. Adherence to the “invisible hand” is sacrosanct, and any argument contradicting it is blasphemy. Any intervention, no matter how targeted, is presumed worse than the problem it aims to solve, even when the economics overwhelmingly show a market is captured.

A purely hands-off approach assumes that firms optimizing for profit will reliably safeguard competition, privacy, transparency, and even basic civil liberties, which is simply not the case for artificial intelligence.

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