A.G. Gancarski
Gov. Ron DeSantis isn’t dropping his critiques of the technology industry, at least not according to comments he made Monday at Panama City Beach’s Boon Docks.
“I don’t want our experience, our ability to live and pursue happiness, which is what the Founding Fathers intended, to be subordinated to the whims of these big tech guys who have maybe a different agenda,” DeSantis said.
The Governor offered comments on what he described as the H1B visa “scam,” and lamented artificial intelligence as dangerous.
DeSantis likened the visas, which disproportionately go to the tech industry, to indentured servitude because workers can’t leave the company.
“They’re laying off all these American workers and then they’re importing H1B visa people to work for cheaper. I think that’s a total scam. I don’t think that that’s good. Yes, it is legal the way they’re doing it. I acknowledge that. They’re using something that’s on the books. But is that good policy for us as a country to have Americans put out of work and then to bring in H1B (visas)? And then they do chain migration from the H1B. So the H1B is bringing in other folks,” DeSantis said.
Regarding artificial intelligence, DeSantis said he was “not one to say that we should just turn over our humanity to artificial intelligence,” expressing worries about moves “to supplant the human experience and to act like humans don’t even really need to think for themselves because they just have these machines.”
“I think it’s very dangerous, potentially. Obviously, technology is what it is. It’s not like you just put your head in the sand and hope it all disappears. But if you look at what the shape of the economy could be like in the future with artificial intelligence, you know, you’re talking about major, major upheavals in jobs and in businesses,” DeSantis opined.
DeSantis also discussed stock market valuations as an indication that people are “very bullish on AI,” but didn’t seem sold that it would be for the long haul.
“You know, we had the big tech run-up in dot com too at the end of the 1990s. So I don’t know whether it’s a bubble, whether it’s going to go even higher. If I knew that, I’d probably find another line of work and probably do pretty well for myself. So people don’t know, but the reality is there’s a lot of eggs in this basket now,” the Governor said.
