AI Frontiers

This post was cross-published on the author's Substack, Rising Tide. ____ ‍ Historically, the way we’ve dealt well with rapidly evolving uncertain processes is classical liberalism. -Dwarkesh Patel, X I wasn’t expecting a book from 1998 to explain the 2023-2024 AI safety wars, but Virginia Postrel's The Future and Its Enemies — which I picked up at the recommendation of libertarian AI policy wonk...

In 1943, a new town appeared in the mountains of northern New Mexico. It didn’t show up on any maps. Families arrived by train under code names. Scientists were issued ration books and cover stories. Children went to school behind fences, while their parents worked on a secret project that would change the world. The town was Los Alamos. It was the home of the Manhattan Project. Built almost overn...

If AI agents can do your job better and faster, what's left for you to do? AI agents are already taking over a range of human tasks. Specialized AI agents are at work right now in customer service, drug discovery, and software development, increasing productivity and speed-to-market by 50% or more, according to one study. This may be just the beginning of a drastic overhaul of the nature of work i...

The United States and China are in a fierce competition to develop and deploy more capable AI systems, as well as to control the AI supply chain. Each side is driven by logical geopolitical and economic objectives. However, unchecked escalation from either carries serious risks that could undermine global security. Although China has historically lagged in AI development, it has spent the last dec...

For years, people have cautioned we wait to do anything about AI until it starts demonstrating “dangerous capabilities.” Those capabilities may be arriving now. Virology knowledge has been limited to a small number of experts. Expertise in dual-use fields like virology is difficult to attain, with people completing multiple degrees and dedicating their careers to reaching the forefront of research...

Make a testable claim. Test it through observation and experiment. Update the claim to match reality. The common-sense notion that we should assess claims about the world through observation appears in texts dating back to ancient civilizations. But it was the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries that formalized and popularized what we now call the scientific method. We are all ste...

Rapid advances in artificial intelligence promise to reshape industries, redefine job roles, and fundamentally alter the landscape of the global economy. No longer confined to manufacturing, AI-driven tools are encroaching on white-collar professions once thought immune to automation — law, accounting, marketing, finance, design, insurance, human resources, and even software engineering. Yet, the...

Chips are the backbone of modern artificial intelligence. One chip in particular, Nvidia's H20, has become a flashpoint. Developed specifically for the Chinese market, the H20 was engineered to avoid existing US export controls while preserving key capabilities that make it highly attractive for advanced AI systems. National security experts and AI policy leaders have urged the US government to tr...

The Compute Shortage of 2028-2031 The following scenario is hypothetical. – Wikipedia entry [last edited 03/25/2034] Most historians point to two key incidents as the catalysts of the Great Compute Shortage. First, China successfully blockaded Taiwan from late 2028 through 2029. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the globe's leading chipmaker, saw its Taiwan-based operations grind to a ha...