January 24, 2026
The Rise of the Answer Machines
This article was originally published in Financial Times.
Every spring, I take red-eyes from Austin, Texas, to Oxford, England, to teach a graduate seminar on AI and philosophy. When I land, I change into a suit and a tie, something I never did as a start-up founder. Crossing the lawns of St Catherine’s College, I feel like an actor stepping into costume.
What if, instead of turning in finished essays, students turned in evidence of their thinking?
In the seminar room, the students are already seated. Rhodes scholars, philosophers, MIT-trained computer scientists. The kind of people who will build the next generation of AI. Each week, we pair old questions with new technologies: we read Plato or Mill, then hear from someone at Google DeepMind or Midjourney about what’s newly possible.
Read the full article on Financial Times.
More from CNAS
-
Commentary
Indo-Pacific Security / Technology & National Security
Sharper: Securing Critical InfrastructureThe systems that keep global society running are increasingly in adversaries’ sights. From sabotage on the subsea cables that enable global connectivity to missile attacks on ...
By Charles Horn
-
CNAS Insights
Technology & National Security
CNAS Insights | A Closing Door on Open Weights? Implications for AI SovereigntyEarlier this month, Beijing announced draft export controls that signaled a potential shift in its longtime embrace of open-weight models. Foreign capitals and corporations sh...
By Vivek Chilukuri
-
Podcast
Technology & National Security
U.S. Military Forges Ahead on Autonomous WeaponryPaul Scharre joins All Things Considered to discuss the use of autonomous weapons in the U.S. military. Listen to the full interview on All Things Considered....
By Paul Scharre
-
Commentary
Technology & National Security
Explainer: How the Trump Administration is Aiming to ‘Modernize’ U.S. SanctionsTo successfully engage the private sector, civil society, and foreign governments, the administration needs to articulate its sanctions modernization efforts in greater detail...
By Alex Zerden
