Ian Bremmer and Mustafa Suleyman: How AI Could Upend Geopolitics | Foreign Affairs Interview

Foreign Affairs invites you to listen to its podcast, the Foreign Affairs Interview. This episode with Ian Bremmer and Mustafa Suleyman was originally published on September 7, 2023.
Ever since the company OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT last year, there have been constant warnings about the effects of artificial intelligence on just about everything.
Ian Bremmer, the founder of the Eurasia Group, and Mustafa Suleyman, founder of the AI companies DeepMind and Inflection AI, highlight what may be the most significant effect in a new essay for Foreign Affairs. They argue that AI will transform power, including the power balance between states and the companies driving the new technology. Policymakers are already behind the curve, they warn, and if they do not catch up soon, it is possible they never will.
Sources for the episode:
“The AI Power Paradox” by Ian Bremmer and Mustafa Suleyman
www.foreignaffairs.com/world/...
“The Technopolar Moment” by Ian Bremmer
www.foreignaffairs.com/articl...
The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman
www.amazon.com/Coming-Wave-Te...

[@patrickevans6052]

Excellent summary of the issues and the urgency of addressing them.

[@danielhalverson2742]

thanks for a wonderful talk. About 44 minutes in they assert that it will not be possible to prevent proliferation of AI technology, but it's not clear to me why they think that. In his book Chip War, Chris Miller explains that all AI depends on advanced microchips and all advanced microchips depend on an extremely complex and expensive manufacturing process combined with rare technical expertise. If a state restricts the sale of the microchips and the machine tools and classifies the technical know-how then why wouldn't they be able to prevent, or at least slow, proliferation? They just explained in the preceding minutes that nuclear non-proliferation efforts have had some considerable success. Isn't that an important part of how nuclear non-proliferation success was achieved?

[@gamarsh1960]

Fascinating discussion. Thank you!

[@nathanngumi8467]

Very interesting discussion, much to think about!

[@ohms497]

I have this issue but haven't read it yet. So this is great.

[@Mimi-up5ro]

Newton's Laws + Special Relativity = History ⇆ Human Psychology #Manifestation
"The gentlest, most reasonable man may, if he wears a large moustache, sit as it were in its shade and feel safe."

[@drjjm1]

What???

[@ronaldwolfe]

Well my eyes have been prised open. What, as a relatively powerless citizen, can I do? Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones benefitting from a large measure of personal freedom. Is that freedom to disappear? How about democracy, democratic processes, coming down to street level, to personal contact with our representatives, and not just for elections? Is there a model for that? How about snail mail filtering out the lies?

[@Erik_Aegir]

interesting on the tech side, naive (i.e liberal naivety) on the political and thus also on the geopolitical side

[@MattsYoutubeChannel]

All I hear from these fellows is thinly veiled glee at the prospect of being masters of the universe, disguised as an urge to save humanity from a death spiral of destruction. As my favorite social critic H.L. Mencken once wrote: "The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve"

[@chromgoog3141]

Keep private sector out of govt n governance out. The incentives do not align. Don’t agree with Mustafa on this one. Live example- 2008 financial crisis shows the Value’ (or rather abuse) of including industry actors in governance and regulatory/govt. decision-making (aka- Henry Paulson and Co.). 2023, His ‘expertise’ (or lack of right decisions) are evident in the windfall govt largesse to bankers and banking sector- at expense of every other sector, human development….etc etc. Now it is a much entangled mess and Govt. cannot figure it out.