Doom or Bloom
Question 1
What do you think AI means for our future—and why?
I think AI can create a future of extraordinary abundance—not just more output, but more individual agency. A person should be able to carry around a personal superintelligence that understands their goals and helps them learn, invent, create art, build a business, improve their health, or accomplish things that would previously have required a large organization. That could unlock a huge amount of human creativity and scientific progress.
The distribution of that intelligence matters as much as its raw capability. A future where one institution controls the most powerful systems is much less attractive—and potentially more dangerous—than one where billions of people have capable agents working for them. Competing agents and labs can check one another, while people retain the power to direct their own lives rather than simply receive whatever a centralized system chooses to provide.
There will be real risks and disruption. Some jobs will change or disappear, agents will handle sensitive information, and not every capability should automatically be released without evaluation. But I don’t accept that safety and capability are inherently opposed. Understanding intent, following instructions, protecting credentials, disclosing only what a task requires, and supporting independent evaluation are themselves important capabilities. Labs should be willing to delay systems when necessary and devote most of their resources to serving people rather than pursuing an uncontrolled self-improvement race.
My basic expectation is still extremely optimistic. Over time, people will use these tools not merely to automate today’s work, but to invent entirely new products, companies, treatments, and forms of expression. This decade is likely to be enormously consequential, and the goal should be to make that power personal and widely available.