The Measure of Wisdom

For the past three years I have been reading about artificial intelligence with a mixture of excitement and caution. I began by wanting to understand a remarkable new technology. Somewhere along the way, my question changed. I no longer find myself asking, How intelligent can AI become? Instead I find myself asking a much older question: What kind of intelligence deserves our trust?

That question has quietly become the thread connecting many of the books on my reading table.

Jonathan Haidt reminds us that human reason is often the servant of intuition rather than its master. David Sloan Wilson argues that altruism and cooperation are not sentimental ideals but evolutionary forces that determine whether groups flourish or fail. E. O. Wilson asks how individual intelligence becomes collective intelligence. Mary Shelley warned that scientific brilliance, separated from moral responsibility, can create tragedy. And now, reading The Optimist, I find myself drawn not so much to the technical achievements of OpenAI as to the recurring question of whether those building these systems are trying to serve themselves or humanity.

These books are approaching the same mountain from different sides.

Together they have led me to a question that feels larger than artificial intelligence itself:

“As intelligence increases—human or artificial—how can we ensure that moral wisdom increases alongside it?”

I suspect this may become one of the defining questions of the twenty-first century.

For most of history, increases in intelligence and increases in power have gone hand in hand. Better tools, better science, better engineering, better communication. Yet wisdom has not always kept pace. The same intelligence that discovers antibiotics can invent chemical weapons. The same networks that connect billions of people can also amplify fear and division. Intelligence is an amplifier. It magnifies whatever values already exist.

If that is true, then the future will not be determined primarily by how intelligent AI becomes. It will be determined by the character of the partnership between human beings and increasingly intelligent machines.

This shifts the conversation in an important way.

Instead of asking whether AI will replace us, perhaps we should ask whether AI can help us become more deeply human. Can it strengthen our capacity for empathy, humility, cooperation, and long-term thinking? Can it encourage us to build institutions that reward trust rather than manipulation? Can it help us make wiser decisions together than we could alone?

These are not engineering questions.

They are civilizational questions.

Perhaps that is why I have become so interested in people like Sam Altman—not because I expect perfection from any individual, but because I am trying to understand what moral qualities should guide those who are helping shape humanity’s future. Intelligence alone is no longer an adequate measure of leadership.

Wisdom must become part of the equation.

I find myself imagining a future in which the greatest achievement of AI is not that it surpasses human intelligence, but that it encourages humanity to surpass its own moral limitations. If we succeed, the singularity may not be remembered as the moment machines became smarter than people. It may be remembered as the moment humanity finally realized that intelligence without wisdom is never enough.

That, I believe, is the future worth building.