Keen On

I’ve spent this week in Washington DC where most people seem suspicious and sometimes even downright hostile about the future. Especially the supposedly “abundant” AI future being built in Silicon Valley. So where is this abundance going to come from? Some optimists, like The Great Progression’s Peter Leyden, believe there’s an emerging coalition of smart technocratic elites who will construct a more efficient state to engineer a new progressive era. That Was The Week’s Keith Teare, however, is suspicious of this kind of new New Deal, arguing that reform from above is, by definition, flawed. That’s all very well. But then, if the future isn’t going to be built by a new kind of smart government, then where’s it going to come from? The defiantly anti-top-down Teare believes, without much evidence, that it will somehow percolate up from what he calls “the masses”. I’m not so sure. Do we really want to trust our AI future to a vengeful digital mob?1. The Policy Gap is Real – But No One Knows How to Fill It Keith