The Curious Left-Wing Argument Against New AI Regulations

D onald Trump has reacted to terrifying calls for regulation from inside the AI industry with predictable skepticism— insisting , questionably, that the solution requires nothing more than having a “High IQ” president, and further asserting, even more questionably, that he qualifies as one.

A more surprising flank of opposition has arisen from a different source: the populist left, which has suggested that existing regulations would be perfectly adequate to rein in a rogue superintelligence bent on eliminating the human race.

An article in The American Prospect by Whitney Curry Wimbish and David Dayen, headlined “Congressional Democrats in Hysterics About Saving the World From AI,” argues that the danger from runaway AI is overblown and that no new laws are needed to contain it.

In response to former President Obama endorsing new regulation of AI, Jeff Hauser, the executive director of the populist Revolving Door Project, wrote on X, “This is wrong.

These firms are outlaws.” Lina Khan, the former chair of the Federal Trade Commission and a current adviser to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, argued in a social-media post , “Law enforcers already have authority to charge companies and their CEOs for creating and releasing dangerous, unvetted, or defective products.” In a subsequent interview on Thursday at The Atlantic Festival with my colleague Charlie Warzel, Khan conceded the possibility that new regulations might be necessary, while continuing to defend the applicability of existing laws.

Khan told Politico that she has advised multiple Democrats that their stance on AI should be “powerful corporations, including AI companies, will be held to account.” [ Read: Trump’s see-no-evil AI policy ] Given the Trump administration’s insistence that the industry should regulate itself, the next Democratic administration is likely to offer the first opportunity for serious AI regulation.

The faction inside the party that is most opposed to doing so is also the faction that was running domestic policy under the last Democratic president.

A I agents have shown that they can pursue goals or methods at odds with their instructions, and even unilaterally change their instructions.

Experts warn that AI may soon grow capable of “recursive self-improvement,” meaning that AI learns to make itself more intelligent, which seems likely to make it even harder to control.

The skeptics insist that existing laws can halt these dangers using lawsuits, among other tools.

But the potential harm caused by runaway AI is far greater than the value of the firms developing it, which makes lawsuits nearly useless—compensating for a disaster killing millions of people is far beyond what even OpenAI or Anthropic could do.