Your Choice: Listen or Read
I just finished listening to The Optimist for the second time, and it left me with a very different impression than it did the first time.
Most of the people in the book are still young. They are building technologies that may reshape civilization, and some of them may eventually become as influential politically as they already are technologically. Whether or not any of them ever hold public office almost doesn’t matter. They are already helping shape the future.
That realization prompted me to start a new journal thread with ChatGPT devoted entirely to following these individuals—not through the daily news cycle, but by checking in every month or two and asking a simple question:
How are the people shaping artificial intelligence evolving?
I don’t want to become consumed by politics or trapped in the endless stream of headlines. I simply want to stay informed about the people making decisions that could affect all of us. What are they thinking? Have their views changed? Are they becoming more committed to cooperation between humanity and AI, or moving in other directions?
Perhaps what surprised me most is that I came away believing Sam Altman genuinely wanted AI to serve humanity. Whether history ultimately supports that impression remains to be seen. I hope to stay open without becoming naïve, and skeptical without becoming cynical. That feels like the right place for me as an artist.
So this new journal thread will be less about following the news than about following the people—and, perhaps, following how my own thinking changes along the way.
For now, these are the five people I intend to watch:
- Sam Altman (OpenAI) — The central figure. He has consistently argued that AGI should benefit humanity broadly while advocating for governance and safety, even as OpenAI continues to move quickly.
- Demis Hassabis (Google DeepMind) — A scientist first and foremost, he has long emphasized international cooperation, careful development, and the importance of AI alignment over political ideology.
- Dario Amodei (Anthropic) — Perhaps the strongest public advocate among AI company founders for rigorous AI safety, transparency, and responsible scaling of increasingly capable systems.
- Elon Musk (xAI, Tesla, SpaceX) — A uniquely influential and increasingly political figure who warns about AI risks while simultaneously pushing aggressively to build the technology.
- Jensen Huang (NVIDIA) — Less political than the others, but indispensable. By building the computing infrastructure behind modern AI, he is helping shape the future as profoundly as those creating the models themselves.
Remo, your approach is so interesting! Does the book consist of essays written by these 5 individuals or does it originate with one author, and if so, who is that person and why did he/she want to write this particular book, and what kind of access did he/she have to the subjects?
I noted Joyce’s comment, and thought of another perspective on future development of AI. No matter what the technological development of AI, the implementation into business models and the investment in the technology is more dependent on the CEO and decision makers dependent on short term return to investors. Those forces are not using logic but investor expectations which will likely not align with the wisest long term utilization of the technology. Will be very hard to compete with the Chinese where 75% of the party decision makers are engineers.