Those who most need to understand AI don’t get it
There are times when a major global development demands a special response from many academic disciplines, industries and departments of government. This was the case with World War II, nuclear weapons and the Cold War — and it is now the case again with generative AI.Yet too often, discussions about AI are overly specialized or siloed between technologists, economists and other disciplines — from political science, psychology and sociology to law and military studies. This is a problem because the technologists are certainly right that AI will change everything, fast, and that the conventional policy world isn’t keeping up. But just as war is too important to be left to the generals, AI is too important to be controlled solely by those inventing it, no matter how brilliant they are.Most AI technologists and entrepreneurs are wildly optimistic. They anticipate revolutionary advances in medicine, the elimination of hard physical labor, radically accelerated productivity growth and universal abundance. They expect such outcomes partly because there is money to be made, but also because their belief in the technology’s potential is sincere.
