AI is a power amplifier. The future depends on who turns the dials.

You’d be forgiven for thinking AI represents a classic Faustian bargain, as every reported blessing seems tied to a sinister curse.
AI will help us navigate the immense amounts of information and data created every day in the modern world, but it will also make it easier for bad actors to swamp the infosphere with disinformation. AI can enable real-time translations to spread ideas seamlessly across language barriers, but it may also make the marketplace of ideas less pluralistic by concentrating power in a few individuals. AI will make all of our jobs easier or straight-up replace us.
If everything goes well, AI will usher in a techno-utopia of unprecedented wealth, leisure, and productivity — and the monkey paw curls.
But this framing doesn’t match reality. In a recent interview, Bruce Schneier, a cryptographer and computer security professional, reminded me that AI isn’t a monolithic force — one meta-technology to rule them all. AI instead represents “a hundred