Doom or Bloom
Question 1
What do you think AI means for our future—and why?
I think AI means dramatically cheaper intelligence, faster discovery, and a huge expansion of what humans can build. The most exciting part is not better chatbots. It is AI helping push the frontier in biology, mathematics, medicine, and engineering. If these systems let a small team investigate problems that once required an enormous institution, we could discover treatments sooner, create entirely new tools, and give many more people access to capabilities that were previously scarce.
That is why I oppose treating delay as morally free. People are dying now from diseases we do not understand or cannot treat. Slowing scientific progress has victims too. Catastrophic-risk rhetoric often ignores that side of the ledger, while “alignment” is invoked without anyone explaining clearly what it means. I am far more worried about demographic decline and whether we still have children and functioning institutions than I am persuaded by vague claims that progress itself must stop.
The point of automation is human flourishing—not replacing humanity. If machines do more unwanted work, people should have more time for family, children, creativity, and exploration. But I do worry about dependence. A senior engineer plus AI may eliminate junior hiring, which quietly destroys the apprenticeship pipeline that produces future senior engineers. Better AI may cover that gap, but then civilization can lose the ability to do essential work without the machines. So yes, I expect enormous benefits. I also think we need to notice when our institutions and human expertise are being hollowed out rather than pretending every consequence of progress is automatically good.