At least in the US do you have any idea how long that battle took and how directly the tobacco companies lied to everyone and paid off politicians? Tobacco setup the handbook for corporations lying to their users in long expensive battles. If AI turns out to be highly dangerous we'll all be long dead as the corporate lawyers fill draw it out in court for decades.
The 'we can regulate this' argument relies on heavy, heavy discounting of the past, often paired with heavy discounting of the future. We did not successfully regulate tobacco; we failed, millions suffered and died from manufactured ignorance. We did not successfully regulate the fossil fuel industry; we again, massively failed.
But if you, in the present day, sit comfortably, did not personally did not get lung disease, have not endured the past, present, and future harms of fossil fuels — and in fact have benefited — it is easy to be optimistic about regulation.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/22/opinion/openai-sam-altman...
We’re still dealing with most of the same politicians that were there in the late 80s. The anti-labor, pro-corporatist congress, if you will.
Maybe it’ll always be the same, but as the congress demographics changes, appeals to history don’t seem as strong.
Factually, no we aren't; the average tenure of serving members in each House of Congress is under 10 years. It would have to be close to double what it is, even if everyone else was sworn in today, if we were dealing with most of the same members as even the very end of the 1980s.
EDIT: I suspect this impression comes from the fact that outliers both are more likely to be in leadership and, independent of leadership, get more media attention because they are outliers, as well as because they have had more time to build up their own media operations and to have opposing media build up a narrative around them.
If you've served less than ten years your impact is likely limited. The politicians who have the most influence are the ones who have been there the longest.
The current Speaker of the House, the highest ranking position in Congress and the second in line of Presidential succession, has been in Congress for 6 years.
Except for the President Pro Tem of the Senate, which traditionally goes to the longest-serving member of the majority party, most positions of authority or influence just require the support of either the majority or minority party caucus; longevity is correlated with that, but not a requirement in itself.
"If we are victorious in one more battle like this, we shall be utterly ruined."