The AI Race Nobody Can Win: A Conversation With Sebastian Mallaby

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The breakneck pace of AI progress and the intensity of the competition for AI supremacy has left U.S. policymakers in a difficult position. They must encourage the innovation needed to ensure an advantage over China and to power economic growth; protect against a national security catastrophe; and assuage the concerns of an anxious and skeptical public. Sebastian Mallaby calls this the “AI trilemma” in his most recent essay for Foreign Affairs. And he argues that it requires more than the piecemeal measures currently on offer in Washington—or, for that matter, in Beijing or Brussels. Mallaby is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the host of a new podcast called The Spillover, as well as the author of The Infinity Machine, an excellent new book about the founding of the AI lab DeepMind. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with him on June 24 about the state of AI competition, about the stakes of that competition, and about how its course will reshape societies, economies, and global politics. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.