THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, The New York Times; It’s Time to Cry Wolf Over A.I.
"Here is what my imagination is telling me. It is telling me that the big A.I. companies in America and China are not being candid with us about how little even they understand the power and reach of the models they have developed, like sorcerers, in their labs. It is telling me that the Trump administration, headed by a man who so often governs by social media post, is uniquely unsuited to the kind of comprehensive, sustained, coordinated governance that keeping A.I. safe demands. And it is telling me that there is so much at stake — economically, militarily and technologically — and so little trust between Washington and Beijing that it would take a miracle for the United States and China to agree on the kind of deep collaboration needed to defuse the most nightmarish threats posed by A.I...
The last time we trusted the good intentions of the tech bros of Silicon Valley, when they told us to “move fast and break things” — regulations be damned — we unleashed social networks that helped fracture our society. I do not trust for one second that these people will put the national interest ahead of their own on A.I...
Trump should be thinking about another president. Dwight D. Eisenhower famously said, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” What he meant was that no fixed plan can survive all the unanticipated stuff that happens once a war or crisis starts to unfold. But if you’ve gone through a rigorous planning process — familiarized yourself with the depth of the problem and the kinds of things that could go haywire and built trust within your team — you greatly improve your ability to adapt on the fly.
That is precisely what was missing in the run-up to Trump’s war with Iran, and we are paying a huge price for that today. Imagine what could happen if A.I. agents — a thousand times cleverer and more dangerous than Tehran or Trump — go off the rails."
