The Butlerian Jihad is coming. It will happen sooner than we think. It will start with Australia, where the popular vote matters the most for political power. “Vote for the Greens! We’ll ban AI! We’ll bring your jobs back! Your savings account will earn interest again! The AI scams will stop!” All false promises, of course. The laws will be pathetic: “Prohibited digital intelligence — any digital system capable of learning, adapting, remembering, recalling, generating, or interpreting information of a textual, visual, audio, interactive or other form.” It will be the Minister’s choice regarding which companies are in the (new) enforcement agency’s crosshairs. Misunderstood situations (like a Tesla running over a child that it didn’t detect) will be used as the war cry. “AI is dangerous! AI cannot be trusted! AI is being used by criminals!”

I hope my prediction is wrong.

A democratic movement leading to increased regulation, even if you think such a thing would be misguided, is hardly a jihad…

If there will be any Butlerian Anything, it will be a reaction to the excruciatingly pathetic attempts at legislating the problem into a slightly smaller problem.

That actually sounds pretty good to me.