There are plenty of experts who are worried about the negative effects of AI, but Peter Thiel — ever the contrarian — is more worried about something else.
In a recent discussion on the Rubin Report, the PayPal co-founder and Palantir Technologies chairman expressed his concerns, not primarily about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence itself, but about the prospect of overregulation leading to a dystopian future. His comments paint a stark picture of a world where, in the name of safety, individual freedoms are sacrificed on the altar of global control.
“The way I would articulate the worry that I have about AI,” Thiel began, “yes, I have some worries about the technology and you don’t want to downplay them. (But) I have even more worries about going from the frying pan into the fire of, you know, worldwide totalitarian control of regulating it and stopping it.”
He continued, “And you know, the Rand Corporation, which used to be sort of a techno-optimist thing in the 60s and 70s, has basically been taken over by the EA (Effective Accelerationism) people. Jason Matheny, this former bioweapons product guy who runs the Rand Corporation, he is basically, one of the things they’re pushing for is something called Global Compute Governance.”
Thiel elaborated on this concept: “Just basically totalitarian one-world government control of the whole world. You know, maybe in the limit case, monitor every keystroke on every computer to make sure nobody can program a dangerous AI.” He concluded this line of thought, stating “And that seems to me far worse than the alternative.”
Turning to the political landscape, Thiel stated, “…But again, think about the politics. The Biden administration was leaning very hard into this totalitarian EA direction. We’re going to have the Luddite, heavy-handed, you know, slipping towards totalitarian controls of technology.”
Offering a contrasting perspective, he said: “And then, and then I think, you know, the Trump administration is this very needed corrective. We’re going to, it’s going to be dangerous, it’s going to be risky, but it’s far safer to try this than to lock it down.”
Peter Thiel is perhaps the first prominent voice to raise concern about the dangers of overregulating AI. There have been several people who’s expressed different levels of concern over AI development, including Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. But Theil is a famous contrarian, and is known for several unusual bets which have played out, including supporting Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016. His reverse assertion — that a less regulated approach is “far safer,” despite acknowledging the inherent risks — is likely to be hotly debated. The debate around AI governance is clearly heating up, and Thiel’s provocative comments are sure to fuel the fire.