But intelligence does not smoothly translate into power. Human beings, for most of our history, were just another animal. It took us eons to turn to build the technological civilization that has given us the dominion we now enjoy, and we stumbled often along the way. Some of the smartest people I know are the least effectual. Trump has altered worl... See more

So what is intrinsic to A.I. as a technology? I’ve been following a debate between two different visions of how these next years will unfold. In their paper “A.I. as Normal Technology,” Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, both computer scientists at Princeton, argue that the external world is going to act as “a speed limit” on what A.I. can do.

In t... See more

There’s something almost comically grim about powering something as futuristic as A.I. off something as archaic as coal or untreated methane gas. That, however, is a political choice we are making as a country. It’s not intrinsic to A.I. as a technology.