I've been laughing when people tell me that for my entire adult life. It remains a pretty funny bit of dark humor, though.

The authority under which this was done has been operative and actively used for several decades. It isn't a partisan issue, it is a policy of American governance. Anyone that has worked on frontier "dual use" technologies will be familiar with the legal regime.

The only thing that changed is people are writing articles about it in the news media.

Well, there are the political ideals expressed or embraced by the populace, and then there are politicians. AFAICT political parties at the national level and state level in the US is pure theater.

Now?

the question isn’t about size, it’s about who the government works for. Small government can promote private interests by not entering certain societal spaces, leaving them for profit making — education, healthcare, housing etc. But large government can also promote private interests, by directing tax dollars to corporations (and still not entering certain societal spaces).

It’s not about size, it’s about where it chooses to operate

Having an a collective economy governed by the “free market” is like having a pile of stones governed by gravity. There exists a primary directive force, but if you want to construct a cathedral or a bomb shelter, you need to impose some constraints, lest you revert to the angle of repose.

Free for me, not for thee

Also free speech/the first amendment and various other rights people are supposed to have but don't in practice.

If you laugh you’re a communist and against Christianity and part of a satanic cabal.

They haven’t claimed to be the free market party since Obama was in office. Trump very much ran an anti free market campaign the first time.

Not just that, Biden administration started with some AI regulation that the Trump administration nixed, and then outright banning models. Lunacy.

its all trump, he is a megalomaniac, not affiliated with any party but his own

If you think that anthropic wasn't pushing aggressive regulatory capture legislation in the Biden administration, why do you think they hired a bunch of people from it?

Then cry as you look for the free market/small government leaders.

That's always been a relative, rather than absolute statement.

Genuine question: if Democrats take power, do you expect them to be more interventionist or less interventionist with respect to AI? Bernie's jockeying leads me to suspect "more", but I could very well be wrong.

(FWIW I personally think modern AI falls in the small realm of potentially dangerous technologies that merit careful, ideally bipartisan, government oversight)

Ever since I've been conscious (the 80s), it's been the party of fear, violence and greed. They've consistently nominated actual clowns for positions of power. B-movie actor Ronald Reagan... Dan Quayle... Sarah Palin... the current, truly stunning iteration of absolute moral and intellectual bankruptcy TWICE after he killed hundreds of thousands of people due to COVID/vaccine skepticism and staged a violent attack on the capitol after losing a democratic election.

Free market? Small government? Big police state, trillions in defense contractor grift, unsustainable tax breaks to the wealthiest leading to massive spending deficits... all while doing everything to erode access to education, healthcare and basic services.

It is just utterly baffling to me. I'm... well along the spectrum... so people not responding correctly to obvious information is just something I've gotten used to but just... wow.

edit: typo

Which party is?

Considering there's no such thing as a "free market" I've been laughing for a real long time. Markets require regulation and enforcement to function.

The US government was created to protect the interests of rich, white, male slave owners. And if you look at Louisiana State Penintentiary (often called "Angola"), which is essentialy a Southern plantation with forced labor, you realize not as much has changed as you might otherwise think.