Why Libertarians Fall for the AI Trap

The artificial intelligence boom has become one of the biggest engines of the American economy. It has also triggered a growing backlash against the data centers that make the boom possible. Tech moguls have rushed to build giant warehouses packed with the computing power needed to run AI systems, but they have done almost nothing to explain to ordinary Americans why those facilities deserve so much land, water, electricity, and political favoritism.

That failure should have created an obvious opening for libertarians. Governments shower data-center projects with subsidies, wield eminent domain to seize land, and help politically connected corporations reshape local communities in the name of technological progress. A coherent libertarian response would attack the merger of state power and corporate power.

Instead, many libertarians have chosen to cheer the expansion without asking what the technology will be used for or whom it will serve. Their quasi-religious loyalty to capital has pushed them into another foolish position and exposed the danger of turning an economic theory into a full worldview.

The tech elite insist that AI will revolutionize the world, but they have done almost nothing to tell average people how their own lives will improve. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs spin wild stories about superhuman intelligence and the automation of tens of millions of jobs. That does not sound like a sales pitch. It sounds like the setup for a science-fiction dystopia. The one concrete justification they offer is strategic: AI will supposedly define the future of warfare, and America must stay ahead of China.

That argument would carry more weight if the same people pushing AI were not also so committed to building the kind of technology most likely to be used against Americans. They are not preparing some noble shield for the republic. They are building tools that can make the United States look a lot more like the techno-authoritarian China they claim to fear.

Data centers consume staggering amounts of electricity, sometimes drawing as much power as a moderate-sized city. They also use enormous volumes of water, create nonstop noise, and disfigure the landscape. Developers have found ways to soften some of those costs by building new power infrastructure and improving cooling efficiency, but none of the problems have been solved. In the meantime, local communities absorb the burden.

The economic case is weak as well. Data centers create construction jobs while they are being built, but once construction ends, they employ surprisingly few people. Governments usually justify subsidies by promising long-term economic activity and job growth. In the case of data centers, corporations collect the incentives while communities get very little in return.

A sane political movement would notice that. Many libertarians have not. Instead of challenging subsidies and land seizures, they have fought to champion the projects. Nick Gillespie of Reason recently posted a chart showing that almond farms use far more water than AI data centers. Almonds are notoriously inefficient in water use, and agriculture probably does consume more water overall.

But the comparison gives away the problem. People eat food. AI, at least so far, mostly offers job displacement and surveillance.

Libertarianism grew, in part, out of the Austrian school of economics, which is useful for understanding markets. It was never meant to serve as a complete theory of human life. Like Marxists, however, many libertarians have turned an economic framework into a totalizing ideology. Free markets, contract law, and voluntary exchange become an all-encompassing lens through which everything must be judged. Once that happens, it becomes difficult to see anything that does not show up in GDP.

The real question is not how much of a resource gets spent, but for what purpose. Most people would not give up a hand to save a cockroach. Most would give up their lives to save a child. On paper, preserving the cockroach may look like the more efficient transaction. Only a lunatic would fail to understand why no sane person would ever choose it over the child.

Read the rest at The Blaze.