Should AI be treated like a firearm for federal sentencing purposes?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by a speech given today by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco “on the Promise and Peril of AI.”  The full speech, as prepared for delivery, is available at this link, and here are excerpts including the portion leading to the query in the title of this post:

Today, as the Chief Operating Officer and the Number 2 person in the Justice Department, I — along with Attorney General Garland — am laser-focused on what may well be the most transformational technology we’ve confronted yet: artificial intelligence, and what it portends for our core mission.

Every new technology is a double-edged sword, but AI may be the sharpest blade yet. It has the potential to be an indispensable tool to help identify, disrupt, and deter criminals, terrorists, and hostile nation-states from doing us harm….

[But] we’ve already seen that AI can lower the barriers to entry for criminals and embolden our adversaries. It’s changing how crimes are committed and who commits them — creating new opportunities for wanna-be hackers and supercharging the threat posed by the most sophisticated cybercriminals…..

The U.S. criminal justice system has long applied increased penalties to crimes committed with a firearm.  Guns enhance danger, so when they’re used to commit crimes, sentences are more severe.

Like a firearm, AI can also enhance the danger of a crime.

Going forward, where Department of Justice prosecutors can seek stiffer sentences for offenses made significantly more dangerous by the misuse of AI — they will.  And if we determine that existing sentencing enhancements don’t adequately address the harms caused by misuse of AI, we will seek reforms to those enhancements to close that gap.

This approach will deepen accountability and exert deterrence. And it reflects the principle that our laws can and must remain responsive to the moment.

I am still thinking through the firearm/AI analogy, and I am not sure it really works. But I do get the idea that “AI can lower the barriers to entry for criminals” and that AI can, in various ways, make some criminal threats and dangers greater.  Just how our sentencing systems should deal with AI-involvement in crime is a topic sure to be of great interest in the years ahead.