This approach comes with some obvious risks of its own. Licensing can often be a step toward cronyism, so we would also need new laws to deter politicians from abusing the system. Moreover, slowing your country’s AI development with additional checks does not mean that others will adopt similar measures. In the worst case, you may find yourself facing adversaries wielding precisely the kind of malevolent tools that you eschewed. That is why AI is best regulated multilaterally, even if that is a tall order in today’s world.

Another big concern is labor. Just as past technological advances reduced demand for manual labor, new applications like ChatGPT may reduce demand for a lot of white-collar labor. But this prospect need not be so worrying. If we can distribute the wealth and income generated by AI equitably across the population, eliminating plenty of work would not be a problem. Far from being diminished by not working, feudal lords were aggrandized by their leisure.

The problem, of course, is that most people do not know how to use free time. Pensioners often become anxious because they do not know what to do with themselves. Now, imagine that happening on a massive scale across younger cohorts. If left unchecked, crime, conflict, and perhaps extremism would become more likely. Averting such outcomes would require modifying our education systems to prepare people for the leisure force. As in earlier eras, education would mean learning how to enjoy the arts, hobbies, reading, and thinking.

A final major concern involves media and the truth. In How to Stand Up to a Dictator, the Nobel laureate journalist Maria Ressa laments that social media has become a powerful tool for promoting fake news. As Amal Clooney points out in her foreword to the book, autocratic leaders can now rely on “an army of bots” to create the impression that “there is only one side to every story.”

(Continued in support post…)