> Artificial intelligence, however, no longer advances in a straight line or within the familiar boundaries of public administration. Instead, it seems to accelerate along exponential curves, reshaping expectations faster than institutions can plausibly adapt.
This is simply untrue, in the very first paragraph.
There is nothing infinite about AI beyond the spending. The marketing wants to make it feel like there’s something momentous here, but other institutions have already reflected that there is little evidence that AI is affecting economic productivity.
davidSenTeGuard on
I wrote this essay to think through a basic policy problem: our institutions are designed to manage linear, measurable change, while AI capability appears to be advancing along exponential curves.
My argument is that humanity has faced apparent infinities before. Industrialization produced an apparent infinity of material production, and the internet produced an apparent infinity of information. We made both manageable by developing new abstractions—standardized measurements, national accounting, communication protocols, and search algorithms—that made previously incomprehensible systems legible.
AI may represent a third transition: an apparent infinity of cognitive labor and machine-to-machine coordination. The policy challenge is therefore not simply to slow it down, but to develop the infrastructure, reliability standards, identity systems, and market rules needed to navigate it.
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> Artificial intelligence, however, no longer advances in a straight line or within the familiar boundaries of public administration. Instead, it seems to accelerate along exponential curves, reshaping expectations faster than institutions can plausibly adapt.
This is simply untrue, in the very first paragraph.
There is nothing infinite about AI beyond the spending. The marketing wants to make it feel like there’s something momentous here, but other institutions have already reflected that there is little evidence that AI is affecting economic productivity.
I wrote this essay to think through a basic policy problem: our institutions are designed to manage linear, measurable change, while AI capability appears to be advancing along exponential curves.
My argument is that humanity has faced apparent infinities before. Industrialization produced an apparent infinity of material production, and the internet produced an apparent infinity of information. We made both manageable by developing new abstractions—standardized measurements, national accounting, communication protocols, and search algorithms—that made previously incomprehensible systems legible.
AI may represent a third transition: an apparent infinity of cognitive labor and machine-to-machine coordination. The policy challenge is therefore not simply to slow it down, but to develop the infrastructure, reliability standards, identity systems, and market rules needed to navigate it.
I write about AI, national security, and information security at my [Substack](https://www.letters.senteguard.com/).