Opinion | In the age of AI, we must learn to act before the future is clear
Many questions about AI, from the outcome of the AI race to speculation about an AI bubble, need more time to be answered. Uncertainty is the new normal
First, the answer to who will win the AI race is at best an opinion and not a matter of fact because the facts are not yet fully known and are changing by the day. AI relies on machine-readable data, and if the data is wrong, the conclusions are wrong.
Relying on AI to interpret a real world that is far more complex and dynamic than any theory, with random factors that are seldom factored in, means that we cannot know for sure ahead of time what the future will bring, even with the best machine or expert analysis. We simply must accept that the interactively dynamic future creates multiple options with a whole range of outcomes. No one is fully in control of our future.
Former US national security adviser Jake Sullivan made a shrewd observation last month in a Foreign Affairs piece he co-wrote with Tal Feldman, titled “Geopolitics in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”. “Washington does not need another prediction about the AI age,” they wrote. “It needs a way to make choices under uncertainty – one that secures the United States’ advantage across multiple possible futures and adapts as the shape of the AI era comes into view.” Policymakers should “treat AI not as a single story but as a shifting landscape”.
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Second, it is simply too early to tell whether there is an AI bubble. At Davos, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari likened the current moment in AI to the early Industrial Revolution, when it took generations for inventions such as the steam engine, electricity and railways to diffuse and be better understood. In situations that are new and exciting, people can sometimes hallucinate through financial speculation, such as the Railway Mania bubble in the 1840s when there was excessive investment in railway tracks and stock.