The past year has been an unusually productive one, both for me personally and for the budding AI industry whose developments I cover. On a personal level, I developed my framework for the private governance of AI; authored essays, articles, and papers; and did a stint in government. Most important of all, God willing, my wife and I will have our first child—a boy—in as soon as a few hours or days from when I write.
I am proud of the work I’ve done, but almost in the end it is all a series of wagers. Wagers about the trajectory of AI, the capacity of our government, the resilience of our people and society, and the readiness of the West for very serious technological change. I have always tried to strike a balance between various opposing extremes, but this is an intrinsically dangerous enterprise. It is when one is trying their damndest to stay balanced that one is likeliest to fall.
Has my work been too laissez-faire or too technocratic? Have I failed to grasp some fundamental insight? Have I, in the mad rush to develop my thinking across so many areas of policy, forgotten some insight that I once had? I do not know. The dice are still in the air.
