Why Nations Win or Lose the Technological Race

Today, Philip Zelikow draws on history to explore how societal decisions shape the adoption and impact of new and powerful technologies like artificial intelligence; Josiah Ober and Brook Manville revisit Benjamin Franklin’s call to “keep” our constitutional republic; and a new paper from Jon Hartley and coauthors examines fears of job loss amid the rollout of AI across industries and roles.

Artificial Intelligence

Letting Go: Why Nations Win or Lose the Technological Race

“The public argument about artificial intelligence tends to create a binary of machines and humans,” with prophetic voices on each side, argues Senior Fellow Philip Zelikow at the Times Literary Supplement. But “this binary misleads,” he says, as “prophets on both sides share an assumption so large that it usually passes unexamined: that the technology itself will determine the outcome.” But this assumption runs counter to the historical record, Zelikow maintains. “Between the invention of a powerful technology and the dispersal of its benefits stands a long, contingent, frequently botched process in which societies do or do not reorganize themselves—their tooling, their businesses, their occupations, their laws,” he writes. “That process, more than the technology itself, is what shapes the future.” Read more here. [Subscription or registration required.]

Freedom Frequency

Do the Work: Benjamin Franklin’s Bargain for Imperfect Americans

In this Founders & Fellows essay, Senior Fellow Josiah Ober and historian Brook Manville take a close look at Benjamin Franklin’s famous warning that America was taking shape as “a republic, if you can keep it.” Franklin was establishing a clear-eyed view of the new Constitution, Ober and Manville write, which meant pointing out its imperfections while expressing the belief that Americans—also imperfect—could fulfill its best qualities. Franklin, known for his pragmatic but also creative approach, speaks to modern Americans in his characterization of the new republic as a political bargain. As the authors note, bargains demand both cooperation and compromise. The future of that republic, Ober and Manville explain, would belong to those willing to work toward “a more perfect union.” Read more here.

Economics

Job Loss Fears in the First Years of Generative Artificial Intelligence

In this working paper published by the Economic Policy Working Group, Visiting Fellow Jon Hartley and coauthors ask, “How do worker beliefs about layoff risk due to generative artificial intelligence compare to the realized labor market impact of the technology, and what shapes those beliefs?” To explore this question, the authors conducted a large survey to measure workers’ perceptions about the risk of AI-related job loss and about AI adoption in the workplace. They found that the average US worker “believes there is a 20 percent chance of losing their job to generative AI within two years, which is comparable to workers’ realized risk of job loss from any cause over a similar horizon.” But the authors also say these fears of job loss aren’t borne out, as AI diffusion across sectors has not reduced job postings to a statistically significant degree. The authors say their findings “suggest that workers learn about AI’s capacity to substitute for their labor by using it and form beliefs about displacement independent of any realized job loss.” Read more here.

Confronting and Competing with China

China: Exporting the Tools of Dictatorship

How does China export its model of surveillance-driven authoritarianism, and how can the US and its allies better compete against the tools of dictatorship?

The Big Idea: A new episode of Policy Stories featuring Hoover Fellow Erin Baggott Carter explains how China’s program of global telecom development has constructed an international architecture of surveillance empowering autocrats worldwide. The challenge for the United States and other free societies, Carter says, is not only to compete with compromised Chinese technology, but also to advance a model of digital governance grounded in transparency, accountability, and individual freedom. Watch here.