Artificial Intelligence, Natural Ignorance
Everyone in Washington seems to agree that artificial intelligence must be governed. The only real dispute is who gets the steering wheel. Congress? Federal agencies? State legislatures? Some newly minted task force with a long acronym and a taste for reporting requirements?
That debate is already too narrow.
President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on “Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security” reflects the tension. The order emphasizes maintaining American leadership in artificial intelligence while directing federal agencies to develop voluntary frameworks, reporting standards, and oversight mechanisms for advanced models. Its stated objective is laudable: encourage innovation without imposing unnecessary burdens on one of the most important technologies of the 21st century.
Yet the executive order also highlights a deeper problem in the current debate. Both sides assume the central question is who should regulate AI. Should authority reside in Washington or in the states? Should Congress act, or should state legislatures lead?
That is the wrong question.
The more fundamental question is whether either level of government possesses the knowledge, incentives, or institutional capacity to regulate a technology evolving at extraordinary speed. Before deciding who should regulate AI, we should first ask whether government can regulate it effectively at all.
The answer is no.
Critics of AI regulation often focus on innovation, competitiveness, or economic growth. Those concerns matter. But they are secondary to a more fundamental insight developed by economists associated with the Austrian and Virginia schools of political economy. The problem is not simply that regulation may slow innovation. It is that neither federal nor state regulators possess the knowledge necessary to determine what AI should become. And even if they did, the political process would steadily transform limited oversight into expansive control.
The result is a regulatory project almost certain to fail on its own terms.