 The politics of AI are getting strange: Last week in Dallas, I listened to a conservative anti-AI activist compare data centers (unfavorably) to mosques for an anti-Muslim audience — and then warn that “algorithmic immigrants” pose a bigger threat than humans. And yet, those of us who covered the long social media wars learned one major lesson: No matter how many times you interview Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Congress will never do anything. The “techlash” that began in earnest in 2017 produced endless media chatter, zillions of tweets, and no meaningful (federal) government action. Journalism notoriously over-learns lessons and re-fights the last war. The AI story has much of the same outlines as efforts to regulate social media — including many of the same lobbyists, politicians, and journalists making many of the same motions. Companies are expressing sober support for regulation in theory, for instance; politicians have learned to make it all about the children. But the media’s learned cynicism may be masking major differences: Last time around, “there was a sense it was too late for major regulations,” my colleague Ashley Gold notes. Now, “people may think they still have a chance to change the future and want lawmakers to act before that window is closed.” Equally important in hyperpartisan Washington, social media was a zero-sum political terrain in which each party had an eye to its electoral advantage. The partisan politics of AI are less clear. And so as the AI story escapes containment, I’m ready to be surprised. Also today: The Treasury secretary battles his press corps, and a legal development in Hong Kong. | 
