Marc Andreessen, a billionaire venture capitalist who got his start helping to create the first successful web browser, published The Techno-Optimist Manifesto on his website and caused something of a sensation. His screed characterizes Artificial Intelligence as, inter alia, “our alchemy, our Philosopher’s Stone” and “a universal problem solver.”
Not everyone agrees. In fact, the reaction of “techno-pessimists” (or realists) has been surprisingly vigorous.
On October 30, President Biden announced a sweeping executive order to assert US leadership on AI. The same week, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak convened a two-day summit in the UK. Many others are weighing in too, about bioweapons, oversight, lack of profitability, and the coming AI job apocalypse.
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RAND Europe, a research arm of RAND, falls on the optimist side of the AI discussion. Their recent report adds an interesting wrinkle by throwing gene editing (which they abbreviate as GE) into the mix, blending its impacts with those of machine learning, aka AI/ML, a subset of AI:
Machine Learning and gene editing at the helm of a societal evolution: The integration of gene editing and machine learning is in an early stage of maturity: Lack of balanced oversight could either stifle innovation or create inequities.
