Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit

Where war is considered tantamount to national suicide, surrender may appear the lesser of two evils.”

Analogously, after the U.S. won the space race, without a competitor to motivate its national efforts, support in Washington for space exploration languished and the budget of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was cut. Over the span of five decades, America’s capacity for crewed spaceflight steadily degraded. From being the s

Artificial intelligence is of course different from nuclear fission in a host of ways. But it would be a grave error to assume that we shall use this new technology more for productive than for potentially destructive purposes.

Zheng He’s voyages, closer in their origins and motives to the modern American and Soviet space programs than to Western equivalents at his time, were not so much leaps into the unknown as the rich products of imperial statecraft. But therein also lies a problem. The very things needed to ensure an expedition’s success, even within a well-resourced

The existence of alternative backers has been critical to sustained exploration.

Undeterred by failure, Shackleton would later make further expeditions to the South Pole. For decades, a story (later debunked) circulated that he had placed the following ad in the London Times: