During his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night President Donald Trump did not once mention artificial intelligence. Which in a perfect world would be a curious if not even unconscionable omission. But in this imperfect world it must be added that he is not alone. Nearly none of America’s political leaders – nor for that matter political leaders anywhere else in the world – are addressing other than perhaps tangentially what arguably are humankind’s greatest challenges. First, to make it as certain as possible that AI will do no harm; second, to harness AI to our collective advantage.
Come to think of it, no surprise. Political leaders are usually too ignorant of AI intelligently even to talk about it. To be sure, both the president of China and the president of the United States know enough to know that they do not want to lead from behind. Both Trump and Xi Jinping are intent on having their respective countries out front in the tech arms race. Still, more specifics are not just unknown to them but to nearly everyone over the age of – to pick a random number – 35.
When it comes to AI, therefore, the only leaders that we have are, by default, leaders in the tech industry. Which brings me to the point of this post. Arguably the only one among them who is not just brilliant but thoughtful and responsible – and, deliberately, a public intellectual – is co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei.
Can you imagine, say, Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Ellison, not to speak of Elon Musk, penning a document as smart and filled with forethought as this one, titled “The Adolescence of Technology”? (The link is below .) It should be required reading for any leader of any organization of any size anywhere in the world – which, alas, it is not.