This summer, a Cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce sickened almost 13,000 people in 21 states, killing two. Investigators traced the illnesses to lettuce supplied by Taylor Farms de Mexico, but the FDA closed its investigation on October 2 without determining how the food became contaminated, leaving questions about how to prevent similar outbreaks in the future.

A new Consumer Reports analysis of the oversight fiasco is damning: It documents conflicting agency updates, confusing recall notices, delays in obtaining supply-chain records, and the delayed enforcement of the FDA's Food Traceability Rule, which cannot be enforced for another two years.

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Public health disasters do not always begin with a new pathogen. Sometimes they begin with a government official who teaches people to distrust proven means of protecting themselves.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has elevated that practice into a governing philosophy. His falsehoods, conspiratorial thinking, and institutional sabotage make him an enemy of the American people. The consequences extend beyond degraded public discourse. They include untold numbers of preventable illness and the foreseeable loss of human life.

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Public-health disasters do not always begin with a new pathogen. Sometimes they begin with a government official who teaches people to distrust proven means of protecting themselves. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has elevated that practice into a governing philosophy. His falsehoods, conspiratorial thinking, and institutional sabotage make him an enemy of the American people. The consequences extend beyond degraded public discourse. They include untold numbers of preventable illness and the foreseeable loss of human life.

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The drumbeat for regulating artificial intelligence is growing louder by the day, largely due to a coordinated campaign that magnifies the technology's risks. It ignores the critical question: Can we regulate effectively without causing a disaster for our technology leadership and economy?

That is not to say, however, that some form of control to prevent the worst consequences of AI — especially "superintelligent AI" — is not needed. More on that below.

Four serious problems arise from creating any form of AI regulatory entity.

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There's a saying that although history might not repeat itself, it does rhyme. Such is the case with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and climate change. In today's communications-inundated world, not only does public reaction to global trends evolve at warp speed, but the boundaries between misinformation, disinformation, opinion and facts blur.

The current result is panic and the whipsawing of public opinion about AI by the day. A new generation of anti-progress Luddites has been born almost overnight. Climate hysteria took hold much more slowly by comparison. This contrast is striking.

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