A FOUR-PART SERIES
WE DON’T NEED SMARTER AI. WE NEED AI WE CAN CONTROL.
Why the next great AI race may be won not by the country that builds the smartest machine, but by the one that builds the most capable machine humanity can reliably control.
Artificial intelligence is already capable enough to transform economics, warfare and society. The more urgent question is whether increasingly powerful systems can remain under meaningful human control. This four-part series examines why software guardrails may be insufficient, why control may need to extend into chips and the computing stack, and why strategic competition with China makes the problem harder—not less urgent.
PART 1
WE DON’T NEED SMARTER AI. WE NEED AI WE CAN CONTROL.
Frontier AI may already be intelligent enough to transform society. The more urgent challenge is ensuring that increasingly capable systems remain reliably under human control.
PART 2
AI CANNOT BE SAFELY CONTROLLED BY SOFTWARE GUARDRAILS ALONE
Software safeguards remain essential, but consequential AI permissions cannot ultimately depend only on the model choosing to obey them.
PART 3
TO CONTROL AI, WE MAY HAVE TO REDESIGN THE ENTIRE COMPUTING STACK—INCLUDING THE CHIPS
Reliable AI control may require enforceable boundaries throughout the computing stack—from permissions and networks to infrastructure and the chips themselves.
PART 4
AMERICA FEARS SLOWING AI WILL HELP CHINA. BUT CHINA HAS A CONTROL PROBLEM TOO.
America fears that slowing frontier AI will advantage China. But China’s deep integration of autonomous AI gives it a control problem—and a stake in solving it—too.