Washington’s growing alarm over artificial intelligence is beginning to echo Y2K, experts say, when dire warnings of technological catastrophe prompted a massive scramble to avert failures that ultimately proved far less severe than feared."You could draw all sorts of scary scenarios with Y2K as well.The financial system was just going to collapse because people had not written their programs for the year 2000.
I had been writing programs in the 1980s for the government, so I'm well aware of the program," Junk Science publisher and founder Steven Milloy told Fox News Digital."But of course, the tech industry knew about the problem, and to the extent that was a real problem, took action to fix it.The same can happen with AI," Milloy added.RESEARCHER WHO DEPARTED AI ROLE OVER FEARS OF RACING INTO EXTINCTION SAYS PEOPLE ARE 'BEGGING' FOR REGULATIONU.S.
President Donald Trump shows a signed executive order on AI next to Sriram Krishnan, Senior White House Policy Advisor on Artificial Intelligence, U.S.Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-TX), U.S.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, David O.Sacks, Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and U.S.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S.December 11, 2025.
(Al Drago/Reuters)Y2K was a computer bug that raised fears systems could fail when the calendar changed from 1999 to 2000.The U.S.
spent an estimated $100 billion, $200 billion adjusted for today's inflation, in preparing for the problem, according to a 2000 Senate report.When the new millennium arrived, there were few major disruptions.President Donald Trump has made rapid AI development and the data centers needed to power it a priority, while the administration promotes the technology’s potential economic benefits and Democrats cry foul before midterm elections.DEMOCRATS EMBRACED AI’S GROWTH BEFORE TRUMP CAME ALONG — NOW THEY WANT TO SLOW IT DOWN"Democrats a...