Conspiracy Theories Give a Boost to State Efforts to Tackle AI

Artificial intelligence isn’t replacing human politicians, overruling election results, or poisoning people anytime soon. Yet bills reflecting such conspiracy theories popped up this year in statehouses across the country.

Fears of human government getting replaced by digital systems led to a North Dakota law barring legal personhood for AI.

Discredited claims of mass voting fraud in 2020 led to legislation (S 1565) to bar AI from Arizona elections.

A Rhode Island bill (H 5866) aims to protect citizens from “inhaled” internet hubs giving AI control over their bodies.

The sponsors of these measures say their proposals could protect their citizens from the potential dangers of AI meddling in elections, legal battles, and even atmospheric quality. AI professionals counter that, whatever the intentions of bill sponsors, their efforts are encouraging conspiracy theories while draining attention from real problems.

“There’s a huge surge of fear around AI, and lawmakers are really struggling to differentiate the very real risks that some systems do pose and the threats that are just conspiracy theories,” said technology researcher Albert Fox Cahn, a fellow at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

A growing number of states are studying how large language models and machine learning might threaten jobs, civil liberties, and intellectual property rights. Industry participants say this more measured approach minimizes the danger of stifling innovation out of concern for future problems that might never materialize.

“Let’s stop for a second, take a deep breath, and see what is really possible in both directions, in terms of risks, but also in terms of the promises,” said Hamid Ekbia, director of the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute at Syracuse University.

The sponsors of the bills in Rhode Island, North Dakota, and Arizona—all Republicans—have argued that immediate action is necessary nonetheless.

North Dakota Rep. Cole Christensen (R) said he introduced the personhood bill because groups like the Swiss-based World Economic Forum (a regular target of conspiracy theories) were pushing to “phase out Congress, phase out the state legislatures, basically make the courts have no authority.”

“If we don’t stop them from doing this, 10 to 20 years from now, we’re not going to have any freedom,” he said.

The bill sponsors in Arizona and Rhode Island didn’t respond to requests for comment.

New Spin for Old Conspiracies

The role of government agencies and tech giants in developing artificial intelligence makes it particularly attractive for conspiracy theories, said Douglas Yeung, an associate director at the Rand Corporation, especially given the well-documented decline of public trust in elite institutions.

“AI operates by taking lots of complex, often confusing material and simplifying it to the point where it just seems to make sense. That is also exactly what conspiracy theories do,” he said.

Arizona Republicans cited a series of dubious and complicated theories to explain how ballot fraud supposedly caused Donald Trump to lose the state in the 2020 presidential election. That effort eventually led state Sen. Frank Carroll (R) to propose banning AI in future elections.

“This is the same election conspiracy theory that has been debunked, that we’ve been told that we can’t keep perpetuating, yet this bill is doing just that,” state Sen. Juan Mendez (D) said on the chamber floor ahead of the bill’s passage in February. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) argued in an April veto message that the bill addresses a non-existent problem.

The other two bills similarly address speculation about future dangers.

Geoengineering remains a theoretical way to address global warming by blocking solar radiation through means like aerosol sprays. That led Rhode Island state Rep. Robert Quattrocchi (R) to sponsor a sprawling “Atmosphere Protection Bill” to outlaw a variety of pollutants more commonly found in science fiction than the troposphere.

These include “chips or sensors” that would enable “warrantless surveillance and control” after being “worn, ingested, inhaled, and/or injected.”

Media stories cited in support of the North Dakota personhood bill noted how AI got a non-voting seat on a corporate board in Singapore and a recording contract with Warner Music Group. Those same stories also noted that humans still control such digital assets and make all the important decisions.

Christensen said he pushed the new law to assert the superiority of humans over digital systems rather than encouraging conspiracy theories.

His bill and those in Rhode Island and Arizona were just three out of more than a hundred AI-related proposals introduced to statehouses this year, but that doesn’t mean they won’t have an impact.

“We’re in this constant feedback loop, in which conspiracy theories are normalized by political rhetoric, through media, through legislation and policies, like the ones we’re talking about here,” said Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, which tracks anti-Semitism nationwide. “That in turn makes them more pervasive in our society.”