Conservatism might be defined as the preference for the devil you know over the devil you don’t. The conservative wants to protect the social order, even with all its imperfections, from sudden upheaval. If you approve of a society taking a proverbial leap in the dark, then whatever else you may be, you are not a conservative. In the words of Edmund Burke, what the conservative recoils from above all is “rashly to engage in perilous adventures.”
“Whatever else you may be, you are not a conservative.”
Artificial intelligence is the ultimate devil you don’t know. The widespread embrace of it is certainly a “perilous adventure.” But almost alone in our political class, it is not a conservative but America’s best-known socialist who is proposing a pause on AI development and a permanent ban on the development of artificial superintelligence.
Displaying conservative instincts is not without precedent for Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator and political independent who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. When he rose to national prominence a decade ago, he was tolerant of gun ownership and skeptical of mass immigration. In this way, he resembled an older version of the American left, which sought a greater slice of the pie for workers but also to protect the dignity, independence, and way of life of average working people. Where conservatives believed that important traditions and folkways were endangered by ideological novelty, cultural revolution, and government overreach, the old left saw the principal danger as exploitation by corporations and the rich. But neither conservatives nor social democrats sought to revolutionize their societies.