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
-
CNAS Insights
Technology & National Security
CNAS Insights | Governing Jailbreak IncidentsIn June 2026, Anthropic publicly released Claude Fable 5, a restricted version of its highly cyber-capable Mythos model. Within days, reports reached U.S. officials that resea...
By Ben Hayum
-
Commentary
Technology & National Security
Closing the Remote Access LoopThis article was originally published in Issues in Science and Technology. As Asad Ramzanali argues in “Why the Cloud Needs Competition” (Issues, Winter 2026), cloud computing...
By Michelle Nie
-
Commentary
Technology & National Security
Losing the War of the FutureThis article was originally published in Foreign Affairs. In its recent campaign against Iran, the United States dominated the skies using its traditional airpower. The U.S. m...
By Paul Scharre
-
Podcast
Technology & National Security
We Need AI Treaties. This Is How We Get ThemIn this episode, Tristan sits down with two experts in this field to discuss the kinds of verification technology we need for AI, the challenges of building it, and the world ...
By Janet Egan & Tim Fist
