After a while, you have to be sleeping not to recognize when a campaign is mounted to influence how you view something. Recently we have seen a campaign whose goal is to force Congress to regulate Artificial Intelligence (AI). Who is behind this campaign and why do they want government regulation?

On Tuesday, Issues & Insights posted an article about the AI panic that is currently being fed by the mainstream media.

The article asks the question:

Twelve years ago, Stephen Hawking said that “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”

Heck, Frank Herbert warned in his 1965 sci-fi classic, “Dune,” that “Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” Countless other sci-fi plots involved intelligent machines killing off or enslaving humans.

So, why is this latest warning getting so much traction? And why did Jacob Coxon, a relatively low-level former employee at Anthropic, become an instant media celebrity?

Sunday, the New York Times home page prominently featured four articles — all free to read — about AI. (See screenshot at right.)

Also over the weekend, the four biggest AI labs called for the industry to slow down development.

The article notes:

Reporters pressed Trump for his take on “concerns about AI leading to human extinction.” His response was that “We’re leading China in AI, we’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins.”

So, again, we ask, who is driving this narrative?

The media don’t seem to care. But there are clues. First is the fact that Democrats are playing it up for political reasons before the midterm elections. They want to win votes. Second is China, which would benefit from the U.S. putting itself into an AI straitjacket.

But there’s another clue. The urgent calls for regulations are coming from the leading AI companies.

Obviously China will benefit if America slows down AI and research into it, but there is another reason the companies involved want regulation. Regulation can create barriers for new companies in the industry. Making it harder for new companies to break into the industry will eventually create a monopoly formed by the companies already there.

Nothing reported in the media happens by accident.