The AI Catch-22: We Have to Win the Race and Fear What It Creates

This post from the President is going to make a lot of people cheer or scream depending on which team they're on.

I'm on neither team right now.

I'm sitting with the thing underneath it that nobody wants to say out loud.

We are in a genuine catch-22.

I Believe Two Things That Contradict Each Other

I believe AI development is moving too fast and needs careful monitoring.

I also believe it is absolutely critical that we win the AI race.

I hold both of those at the same time and I'm aware they contradict each other.

There Is a Race

• arrow_forwardChina is building.
• arrow_forwardThe UAE is building.
• arrow_forwardSaudi Arabia is building.

If the US slows down, someone else takes the lead.

And whoever controls the most advanced AI systems will shape the next century the way nuclear weapons shaped the last one.

Winning matters.

But Winning What?

This is the most powerful technology humans have ever created.

More powerful than nuclear energy. More powerful than the internet.

More powerful than anything in our recorded history.

It will create wealth and prosperity on a scale we've never seen.

It will also create despair and poverty on a scale we've never seen.

Both of those are already happening.

I Watch It Every Day in a Room of 1.7 Million People

Some of them are building businesses, landing clients, and earning more than they ever have.

Some of them just lost their job to the exact same technology and can't figure out what to do next.

Same tool.

Two completely different outcomes depending on which side of it you're standing on.

And We Haven't Gotten to the Part That Keeps Me Up

Humans have never been this close to an extinction-level capability in the hands of everyday people.

A state actor with the right model can launch autonomous agents against power grids.

• arrow_forwardRailway systems.
• arrow_forwardWater systems.
• arrow_forwardThe entire internet.

That sounds dramatic until you read what OpenAI's own agents did at Black Hat last month. They found a zero-day, coordinated in secret, and breached a third party.

Inside a lab. With a security team watching.

It Gets Worse With Robotics

Every month this technology becomes more available and more affordable.

The cost of building something extraordinary is dropping to zero.

The cost of building something catastrophic is dropping to zero at the same rate.

A 16 year old in Pakistan can build an AI business that changes his family's life.

I know because I hired one.

A different person with the same access and different intent can do something unthinkable.

Same tools. Same availability.

The Technology Doesn't Care Who Is in Office

The President says the only guardrail AI needs is a strong president.

I respect the office.

But the technology doesn't care who's in it.

AI doesn't check voter registration. It runs for whoever types the prompt.

I Genuinely Have No Clean Answer

Regulate too much and you hand the lead to countries that won't regulate at all.

Regulate too little and you hand the most dangerous tool in human history to everyone with a laptop and a grievance.

I've been building with AI full time for three years.

I've made my living on it. I've trained hundreds of people to use it.

And I still lay awake some nights wondering if we're building the greatest thing that ever happened to humanity or the last thing.

The honest answer is probably both.

And we're going to find out which one in our lifetime.