Science and Technology

Should we worry about the dangers posed by artificial intelligence? Of course we should. But a greater worry for me right now is the failure of human intelligence to control this amazing technology wisely. We have a dangerous combination of very smart machines and very dumb political leaders.

Last weekend brought what seemed like a breakthrough moment of human rationality. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, issued a plea for a “middle way” to pace the risks of AI as the world races toward the immense opportunities it presents. He was joined within hours by three of the smartest minds about this technology: Sam Altman of OpenAI, Elon Musk of xAI, and Demis Hassabis of Google’s DeepMind.

Should we worry about the dangers posed by artificial intelligence? Of course we should. But a greater worry for me right now is the failure of human intelligence to control this amazing technology wisely. We have a dangerous combination of very smart machines and very dumb political leaders.

Last weekend brought what seemed like a breakthrough moment of human rationality. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, issued a plea for a “middle way” to pace the risks of AI as the world races toward the immense opportunities it presents. He was joined within hours by three of the smartest minds about this technology: Sam Altman of OpenAI, Elon Musk of xAI, and Demis Hassabis of Google’s DeepMind.

“It takes courage to stand in front of an express train and yell at it to slow down,” Sebastian Mallaby wrote in the New York Times about Amodei.

The AI executives’ message was simple: Humans should think carefully about building guardrails before the thinking machines can leap into a new era of “superintelligence,” where they will write their own code and perhaps set their own course. As Amodei put it, “I believe we owe it to humanity” to try to mitigate the risks.

But then we descended from the sublime to the ridiculous: “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday. The national debate quickly turned to paralyzing political bickering. Conspiracy theorists were claiming by week’s end........

© Foreign Policy