- Policy analyst David Wojick argues the AI policy debate is dangerously vague because no one has defined what should be regulated.
- He says calls to pause AI development never specify which technologies or activities would actually be paused.
- Wojick also questions the much-hyped AI race with China, noting no one has explained what winning would look like.
- Daily Wire writer Anang Mittal warns Sen. Bernie Sanders’s proposed pause could create a permit system that protects Big Tech incumbents.
- Block co-founder Jack Dorsey cautions that safety rules built around today’s industry leaders could shut out smaller competitors.
A blackjack computer program once saved David Wojick a pile of cash by showing him he had no business at the card table. That bit of self-knowledge came courtesy of artificial intelligence — the same broad label now attached to a government pause that, according to Wojick, nobody can actually define.
Wojick, a policy analyst who holds a doctorate in logic and the philosophy of science and once ran a firm that worked on federal regulations, made his case in a piece for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). He argues that lawmakers and advocates are rushing toward regulation without specifying what they’re even trying to regulate. His concern: panicked, vague rules could create paralyzing confusion across an industry that could be worth trillions of dollars, all because the debate has never bothered to identify its target.
Why ‘AI pause’ is an empty slogan
The field of artificial intelligence is more than 70 years old and has spawned a wide range of distinct technologies. Programs that could outplay chess grandmasters arrived early. Expert systems boomed in the late 1980s. GPS routing, automated customer service, self-driving cars, military drones — none of these existing systems are part of the current regulatory debate.
Yet there is loose talk of pausing AI development, which prompts an obvious question from Wojick: “Which AI development? For that matter, what counts as AI development?”
Google alone spent over $60 billion on research and development last year. How much of that is AI-related? It depends entirely on definitions that do not exist. Wojick warns that rules written without a clear target are likely to freeze progress and sow confusion instead.
The ‘China race’ that nobody can explain
Beyond the pause proposal, Wojick trains his sights on another popular talking point: the AI race between America and China.
“I have yet to see this race defined or explained,” Wojick writes. “Race to do what? What does winning look like?”
There will never be one AI system that wipes out the competition, he notes. Instead, AI spans an enormous industrial landscape with countless products. Wojick argues that discussing a “race” without definitions is dangerously incoherent, especially when it drives policy decisions with high economic stakes.
A debate stuck in a vacuum
The core problem, Wojick argues, is that the entire AI policy debate “borders on being incoherent because we literally do not know what we are talking about.”
Good laws start by spelling out exactly who and what falls under the rules, which is why regulations often devote pages to definitions. The AI discussion, by contrast, has no such precision.
A warning from history: the License Raj
History offers a cautionary tale. Anang Mittal, writing for the Daily Wire, notes that Sen. Bernie Sanders’s proposed AI pause would effectively create a domestic permit system — one whose definitions the largest tech companies would help write, since regulators lean on their technical expertise.
Mittal grew up in India as it dismantled the “License Raj,” a permit-and-quota system that was supposed to protect small businesses from powerful conglomerates. Instead, the big players lawyered up, made friends in high places, and turned government licenses into an edge over smaller rivals, stifling innovation for decades.
A pause on AI, Mittal warns, would lock in the very oligopolies Sanders says he opposes, shielding today’s giants from up-and-coming competitors while China’s labs keep innovating.
Block co-founder Jack Dorsey has raised a similar alarm, warning that safety rules tailored to today’s industry leaders could shut everyone else out. “Preserving a company’s commercial advantage is not a safety objective,” he wrote on X.
The AI debate presents a fundamental choice: either define the thing you want to regulate with precision, or watch as panic-driven, incoherent rules create the very outcomes nobody wants: slowed innovation, entrenched monopolies, and American dependence on foreign technology.
“The potential for destructive confusion is immense,” Wojick writes. Without definitions, that confusion is all but guaranteed. And if those definitions do get written, Americans should watch closely whose lobbyists are holding the pen.
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