Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley Are Borrowing Joe Biden's Playbook To Regulate AI

Republican AI opponents sound an awful lot like Democrats.

When President Joe Biden left office, he said of artificial intelligence (AI), "nothing offers more profound possibilities and risk for our economy and our security, our society, and very often, for humanity." The former president's farewell warning has been heeded by an unexpected audience: MAGA Republicans.

On Friday, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced an "artificial intelligence individual bill of rights." While DeSantis refused to "go in depth" about the plan, he disclaimed that, while he welcomes technologies that will enhance the human experience, he opposes those that "supplant the human experience." Specifically, the governor inveighed against machines that "totally take away our responsibility to think for ourselves." Accordingly, the aforementioned bill of rights would offer Floridians "protection against some of these technologies if they run amok."

Although details are scant, DeSantis' AI Bill of Rights appears to borrow language from Biden's September 2022 AI Bill of Rights blueprint, as R Street's Adam Thierer points out. Biden later incorporated that blueprint into an executive order establishing the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.

DeSantis' screed also sounds eerily similar to the commandment from the Orange Catholic Bible in Frank Herbert's Dune: "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind." But the Florida governor isn't the only Republican waging Butlerian Jihad against AI.

Sen. Josh Hawley's (R–Mo.) recent speech at the National Conservatism Conference revealed an opposition to AI more specific and extreme than DeSantis'. Hawley claimed that recent technological developments have proven inimical to the common man's liberty: "Every so-called innovation that the tech class has delivered in recent decades operates as a power transfer…from us to them." But, as Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward points out, the "decentralization, democratization of communications and banking and labor and travel…made possible by new tech" has been a boon to people and society.

Hawley most proudly displays his Luddism and lust for central planning when he says that "most jobs should be reserved for humans. Only humans ought to drive cars and trucks." As the Cato Institute's Jennifer Huddleston explains, adopting such a policy would hinder the development of autonomous vehicles, whose enhanced safety features have the potential to "save more than 30,000 American lives each year." Hawley's statement also implies that AI will push people out of their jobs, but rumors of an impending AI labor market apocalypse are greatly exaggerated.

Some Republicans appreciate AI's potential to improve society. Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) unveiled the SANDBOX Act on Wednesday, which realizes the deregulatory agenda of President Donald Trump's AI Action Plan by allowing AI developers to ask for exemptions or modifications from "regulations that could impede their work." The act requires federal agencies to solicit and consider private sector input as to whether applicants' plans would, among other things, risk economic damage, which the bill defines as "tangible, physical harm to the property or assets of a consumer."

While he was in office, Biden promulgated AI regulations that tech groups warned would hurt America's standing as a leader in the sector. Republicans like DeSantis and Hawley are continuing this legacy.