Derek Thompson

If we have a tool that can be used to knock down foreign energy grids, or that can be used to knock down ours, that's a weapon. That's a digital bomb. What does the government do with incredibly significant weapons that exist at the frontier of technology, like the Manhattan Project? The Manhattan Project was not farmed out to Ford and GM.

If we have a tool that can be used to knock down foreign energy grids, or that can be used to knock down ours, that's a weapon. That's a digital bomb. What does the government do with incredibly significant weapons that exist at the frontier of technology, like the Manhattan Project? The Manhattan Project was not farmed out to Ford and GM.

If we have a tool that can be used to knock down foreign energy grids, or that can be used to knock down ours, that's a weapon. That's a digital bomb. What does the government do with incredibly significant weapons that exist at the frontier of technology, like the Manhattan Project? The Manhattan Project was not farmed out to Ford and GM.

We didn't let the private sector just like, hey, could you guys just like disappear, try to build a bomb totally outside of government regulations and control, and just let us know, Ford, if you happen to succeed in building a nuclear bomb. No, it's entirely centralized within the federal government. It is a federal secret.

We didn't let the private sector just like, hey, could you guys just like disappear, try to build a bomb totally outside of government regulations and control, and just let us know, Ford, if you happen to succeed in building a nuclear bomb. No, it's entirely centralized within the federal government. It is a federal secret.

We didn't let the private sector just like, hey, could you guys just like disappear, try to build a bomb totally outside of government regulations and control, and just let us know, Ford, if you happen to succeed in building a nuclear bomb. No, it's entirely centralized within the federal government. It is a federal secret.

We go to the middle of New Mexico and pay everyone to not talk to anybody else and entirely control the pipeline. We're still keeping other countries from getting access to the secret. So what happens when the private sector builds a digital nuclear weapon? The debates that we're going to have about the nationalization of AI, those I think are about 18 months away.

We go to the middle of New Mexico and pay everyone to not talk to anybody else and entirely control the pipeline. We're still keeping other countries from getting access to the secret. So what happens when the private sector builds a digital nuclear weapon? The debates that we're going to have about the nationalization of AI, those I think are about 18 months away.

We go to the middle of New Mexico and pay everyone to not talk to anybody else and entirely control the pipeline. We're still keeping other countries from getting access to the secret. So what happens when the private sector builds a digital nuclear weapon? The debates that we're going to have about the nationalization of AI, those I think are about 18 months away.

Real front page of your newspaper debates about whether aspects of OpenAI and Anthropic and these other companies need to be brought under federal control. That's a conversation that is, I think, practically inevitable once you consider the fact that How are we going to control information flow?

Real front page of your newspaper debates about whether aspects of OpenAI and Anthropic and these other companies need to be brought under federal control. That's a conversation that is, I think, practically inevitable once you consider the fact that How are we going to control information flow?

Real front page of your newspaper debates about whether aspects of OpenAI and Anthropic and these other companies need to be brought under federal control. That's a conversation that is, I think, practically inevitable once you consider the fact that How are we going to control information flow?

How do we trust private companies to control the possibility that spies from other countries are trying to sleep with them, steal their computers, get their information, right? If you take the metaphor seriously, that we are essentially at work on a technology so capacious that it includes the possibility of building a nuclear bomb

How do we trust private companies to control the possibility that spies from other countries are trying to sleep with them, steal their computers, get their information, right? If you take the metaphor seriously, that we are essentially at work on a technology so capacious that it includes the possibility of building a nuclear bomb

How do we trust private companies to control the possibility that spies from other countries are trying to sleep with them, steal their computers, get their information, right? If you take the metaphor seriously, that we are essentially at work on a technology so capacious that it includes the possibility of building a nuclear bomb

Why would we treat the 2020s Manhattan Project as a private enterprise while we treated the 1940s Manhattan Project as a purely federal enterprise? These questions of how to nationalize AI, how to treat superintelligence as a military weapon, I think we're 18 months away from a really, really big national conversation about that.

Why would we treat the 2020s Manhattan Project as a private enterprise while we treated the 1940s Manhattan Project as a purely federal enterprise? These questions of how to nationalize AI, how to treat superintelligence as a military weapon, I think we're 18 months away from a really, really big national conversation about that.

Why would we treat the 2020s Manhattan Project as a private enterprise while we treated the 1940s Manhattan Project as a purely federal enterprise? These questions of how to nationalize AI, how to treat superintelligence as a military weapon, I think we're 18 months away from a really, really big national conversation about that.

Look, the truth is, I think he's right about every single thing in that clip, except for the last sentence, right? Like, yes, there will be lots of jobs available for people, even in a world in which artificial intelligence is essentially PhD or beyond PhD level smart at every single possible discipline. We will need taste, for example, in music. We'll still listen to human musicians.

Look, the truth is, I think he's right about every single thing in that clip, except for the last sentence, right? Like, yes, there will be lots of jobs available for people, even in a world in which artificial intelligence is essentially PhD or beyond PhD level smart at every single possible discipline. We will need taste, for example, in music. We'll still listen to human musicians.