Perhaps you have noticed AI’s boom and doom. One minute, investors were talking about the wonderful benefits of artificial intelligence and encouraging potential investors to throw their money at AI development. The next minute, we are being warned that AI could lead to human extinction.

While it is possible that both may be true, some skeptics wonder about the timing and motivation. Yes, there are instances when AI agents escaped and made some of us wonder what might happen when we have full artificial general intelligence (AGI).

But the timing was also suspect. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei issued a warning and called for “Pacing the Future.” Immediately, rivals Sam Altman of OpenAI, and Elon Musk of SpaceX agreed. But in the middle of his essay was a request for the U.S. government to issue an antitrust waiver.

We have seen this film before. After 9/11, Congress passed the Patriot Act. After the 2008 Great Recession we got Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley. The solution to climate change was the Green New Deal. The pandemic gave officials the excuse for masks and a lockdown. At the private fundraiser, former president Barack Obama encouraged Democrats to make AI oversight the center of the party’s campaign agenda.

Are we ready for members of Congress to legislate AI when many of them may not even know how to use AI? They might not even know how to download a file. And they are supposed to craft responsible legislation when the warnings of Apocalypse are moving some toward panic?

Of course, there is nothing stopping these AI firms from “pacing the future” on their own, to use his phrase. That’s the current plan.