Common Sense 2026: AI In America – the open letter I dictated over 2 months
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Also there’s an unusually high downside potential to AI, so I don’t even think that hesitancy is necessarily unwarranted. The new slop economy, the “they’re coming for our jobs” effect, “mechahitler”, Palantir, possible extinction-level rogue AI events…
History will attend to itself, as will the discourse. In the meantime I feel that it’s incumbent on us as nerds to try to do AI right, because there are definitely bad actors out there trying to do it wrong.
I think on downside, as with anything, obviously, like downside and upside are gargantuan in the same proportion here.
and the hesitancy is absolutely not unwarranted. it is warranted. But I think, I guess a big part of what I'm trying to push back on in the hearts and and minds of everyday people is this idea that maybe the right answer is to just say no, right? When in reality I would argue that the problem is the solution is the problem, if that makes sense.
I think it's not hard for people to imagine a future where autonomous intelligence is kind of the key to a brighter tomorrow. it's just that in the same way that people tend not to remember the good things that happened to them in an outsized way relative to the bad things that happen in their life, I think people are a little bit more scared of the downside risks here than excited about the upside.
And maybe not realizing fully that within the tools themselves exists the solution. and obviously we can talk about what those solutions could be, some of it is fantastical future-tech yet to be invented here soon. But I think in this nascent moment there's so much still left to do and the to your point it's incumbent on us all to try and do AI right.
And I think the good thing is as long as we can stay on track and as long as we eventually hit a moment where, where AI is curing cancer, essentially you and I don't have any work left to do as AI nerds, right? Like the hearts and minds issue is solved. and I think anyone who is talking about "they're coming for our jobs" is going to probably, probably even if they really, really love their job and they're scared about what AI means, they're probably going to be okay with the idea that if it means my cancer is gonna be cured, like let's keep on going down that track and let's continue to pepper in the idea of freedom, of liberty, of individual thinking into AI and intelligence tools as a kind of core ingredient here, right?
and I think if we can if we can do that directionally were on the right track in a big way. Thanks lewdwig.