Amid the many debates over AI, everyone can agree on one thing: this marvel of a technology throws up great and unprecedented uncertainties. The possible endgames put forward by serious observers range from a productivity utopia to the annihilation of humanity.
That uncertainty need not be paralysing. Instead we can take it as a source of focus: it means that how we address the AI revolution should be seen as a question of how we choose to manage uncertainties, and what tools and principles we adopt to harness risk for the best result.
Recently even Donald Trump’s White House — hardly an AI-sceptic administration — has shifted towards putting at least some regulatory constraints on the most powerful models before they are let out in the wild. In contrast, Argentina is trumpeting a different approach. Its president, Javier Milei, declared in the FT this week that his country would commit not to impose regulations on what AI algorithms will be permitted to do, and to introduce a legal category of “non-human corporation” — companies run entirely by AI.