ROGER KIMBALL: The Madness of the Anti-AI Crowd.

What is novel in many of our current perturbations is the behind-the-scenes interventions of more or less malevolent, and in many cases malevolent foreign, actors. The extraordinary popular delusions and madness of the COVID crowds is a case in point. Four or five years on, we have largely forgotten the mask-wearing, social-distancing, economy-blighting harridans of both sexes who acted as the enforcers of the COVID hysteria that China bequeathed us. It will soon be the same as the windmill-championing net-zero lunatics who have worked assiduously to dismantle Western prosperity. Are you surprised that China, Russia, and the Arab states eagerly abet the Greta Thunbergs of the world?

The latest delusional entertainment is the “AI-is-the-Antichrist” brigade. Two things happened last week to make this new panic snap into focus. First, frenetic socialist loudmouth Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar, chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (yes, really), want to impose a moratorium on what they call “artificial superintelligence.” And what if the AI companies of the world ignore them and persist? Sanders and Casar want the state to come down on them with draconian force. “Entities,” they write, “shall be subject to the corporate death penalty, and persons shall be subject to not more than 20 years in prison, which is similar to existing penalties related to unlawfully developing nuclear weapons.”

What’s that chuckling you hear backstage to the left? Why, that would be the tittering of Chairman Xi and his posse of Chinese AI developers. Bernie Sanders is doubtless one of their favorite American politicians.

If he wasn’t already, he certainly is now.