February 10, 2025
How Can We Develop AI That Helps, Rather Than Harms, People?
In every technological revolution, we face a choice: build for freedom or watch as others build for control. With AI the stakes couldn’t be higher. It already mediates 20 per cent of our waking hours through smartphones, automated systems, and digital interfaces. Soon it will touch nearly every aspect of human existence. While AI promises to liberate us for higher pursuits by “extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking,” history – from the iron cage of Soviet bureaucracy to modern Chinese surveillance – serves as a stark warning that automation can just as easily erode our freedoms and condition us to passively accept social control.
Today’s debate about AI’s future is dominated by competing visions of control. Doomsayers, like some of those at this week’s AI Action Summit in France, advocate for strict controls (even “pauses” on all development) that would forfeit progress while inviting tyranny.
Read the full article on The Spectator.
More from CNAS
-
Reports
Technology & National Security
Red LinesChinese advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems pose a serious and growing threat to U.S. national security. At least seven Chinese developers now produce systems with f...
By Daniel Remler
-
Commentary
Technology & National Security
Taiwan Is the Key to AI DominanceA country determined to win the defining technological race of the century can’t allow its chief rival to control the industrial base on which that race depends....
By David Feith
-
Reports
Technology & National Security
American AI Companies Can’t Get Enough ChipsIn 2026, artificial intelligence (AI) chip production has become a binding constraint on the pace of the AI compute buildout. Demand for computing power to train and deploy ad...
By James Sanders, Janet Egan & Rory Madigan
-
Reports
Technology & National Security
Off TargetThe pace of progress in frontier artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities shows no sign of slowing. Frontier models offer transformative potential for national security—from ...
By Caleb Withers, Jay Kim & Ethan Chiu
