This post is very much worth reading, and reflects my own assessment of the situation quite well. https://reidhoffman.substack.com/p/ai-dual-mandate?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=qxfw…

AI for All Americans

Source: https://reidhoffman.substack.com/p/ai-dual-mandate?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=qxfw It is no surprise that Americans are wary of AI. Most Americans work hard and still struggle over things they shouldn’t: putting gas in their car, paying their electric bills, going to the doctor, saving enough for retirement. Even the modest pleasures that make hard work feel worthwhile feel increasingly out of reach. And, while Americans know that innovative technologiescancreate businesses, generate jobs, and grow the economy, too many Americans arestillwaiting for that prosperity to reach their families. They’ve also experienced how new tech can cause real harm (ask any parent who’s watched their kid struggle with the mental health effects of social media).

So while AI will transform our economy and the world around us, Americans are right to demand that this transformation serve their needs, not just the interests of the already rich and powerful.

Tech leaders have been warning the public about the potential for massive job loss in the next handful of years. Researchers from both OpenAI and Anthropic have resigned in protest, fearing that their employers were failing to manage the existential risk of an AI-driven human extinction event. When the people building this technology say your job, your children’s future, and maybe your life are on the line, they cannot then ask the public to welcome AI on faith.

To be clear: There is genuine existential risk –– “X-risk” –– here, and it is genuinely complicated. Many experts are wrestling with X-risk in good faith, debating independent safety evaluations, government oversight, and international cooperation. These different proposals raise a common question: how do we protect the public while ensuring that the power of AI is broadly shared?

Dario Amodei’s recent call to slow advances in the most powerful AI models, embed independent evaluators inside labs, and coordinate government safety requirements is a serious attempt to reconcile technological leadership with safety. Sam Altman’s agreement that pacing development and independent evaluators are needed is another step in the right direction, and shows that collaboration is possible.

While I applaud these ideas and their commitments to them, I also believe they’re missing something critical. Even a workable agreement on the pace of development leaves unanswered how the benefits will reach ordinary Americans. If companies and governments can negotiate the conditions under which AI is safe enough to advance, they can also negotiate how that progress will make everyday Americans’ lives better.

This American generation is faced with the herculean tasks of obtaining economic prosperity for the many,andsecuring American AI leadership in the new world order. All this must be done while ensuring the safety of the American people. This is the necessary dual mandate, not just for one industry or economic sector, but for America at large.

As AI technology accelerates development and economic precarity increases, the decisions we make in the next 36 months are crucial; we are setting a course that will determine the winners and losers, both domestically and internationally.

In the Industrial Revolution, societies that harnessed new industrial technology became global powers in the centuries that followed. The societies that could or did not harness new technology were forced to live with the consequences of decisions made elsewhere. AI will sort the world the same way: those who harness it effectively will gain cultural and economic power, and those who don’t will become subject to forces they do not control.

Too much of the conversation about what to do with AI has been dominated by two polarized camps: the extreme accelerationists and the extreme decelerationists. Neither prescription is tethered toboththe outcomes that matter: whether Americans’ lives get better, and whether America stays secure in the new world order.

The extreme accelerationist case is that speed is safety, and any friction is untenable: whoever builds the most capable systems sets the rules, and because American values are better than the alternatives, we should build whatever we can, as fast as we can. Accelerationists concede that while there is risk and while economic transition costs will be significant, we must take those risks and pay those costs to reach the full benefits of AI. President Donald Trump has downplayed warnings about AI’s risks and calls to slow its development, arguing that America cannot afford to lose its lead over China.

But accelerationists rarely volunteer to open their own checkbook, or let their own children struggle to find their way in a new world. Their position offers little to a worker displaced in 2027, or to families who cannot afford the basics right now, or to college graduates facing an unforgiving economy beyond the promise that abundance arrives…eventually.

The extreme decelerationist case is that we are building something we don’t understand, and we should stop all development until we do. It calls for a moratorium on AI. Some call for coordinated global bodies governing what gets built and who gets to build it. That vision depends on unrealistic, global cooperation that would only exist in a more utopian world. An absolute moratorium on AI development by the well-intentioned shifts technological power toward less accountable hands, giving bad actors and hostile nations, like China, greater influence over systems Americans will increasingly depend on.

The extreme accelerationist and decelerationist camps have shown the limitations of their positions. Take, for example, the debates over data centers. The accelerationist position is simple: build, everywhere, now. Public engagement, regulation, and permitting are the enemy; local objections are NIMBYism; any delay is a gift to Beijing. They argue that the grid will catch up to the strain and that the increase in electricity costs -– up 20% because of data centers in places like New Jersey -– has nothing to do with data centers.

When accelerationist tech leaders explain that AI will take jobs and then show up to a town with a request for a thirty-year tax abatement, an NDA, and a plan that leaves ratepayers footing the bill for new transmission lines,that’s a deal people are right to reject.

The decelerationist position is the mirror image. They describe data centers as purely extractive: consuming enormous amounts of power and water, pushing up electricity bills for the families living next door, delivering few permanent jobs, all to create profits for trillion-dollar companies. Their chief answer is moratoria, and where that doesn’t work, they’ll go with restrictive zoning, and hearings and other bureaucratic processes designed to run out the clock. Reflexively blocking a project without negotiating forfeits any possible benefits to a community, from new tax revenue, new jobs, and other potential investments –- and -– it just moves the compute somewhere else, potentially to a country with no interest in American security or values.

There is an ambitious and realistic way to address the data center problem, one that would satisfy our dual mandate. Data centers can be opportunities to advance the technology and deliver real, immediate benefits to everyday Americans. And the communities that will live alongside a data center for decades should decide whether it gets built and on what terms. When constituents want a data center, the deal should be negotiated in public by local governments using maximum leverage to negotiate with corporations on the public’s behalf. People are right to expect benefits. From stable grids to free markets, we’ve given the labs and hyperscalers every reason to want to build in America. Now it’s time for the public to present its conditions. Let’s not walk away from the negotiating table when we have real leverage to win material benefits.

Good agreements can mandate that utility bills go

down, not up, and that the new property tax revenue these facilities generate lowers the tax burden on local families. Agreements can also include commitments to local hiring and union apprenticeship programs during construction, funded training for the permanent operations roles, and investment in local schools and infrastructure. They can make companies pay for necessary grid or road upgrades and any new generation their facilities require, so that ratepayers see bills decreasing rather than subsidizing hyperscalers. Environmental commitments (closed-loop cooling, water-use caps, clean power procurement), can be conditions of approval, enforced with penalties.> The communities that will live alongside a data center for decades should decide whether it gets built and on what terms. I feel strongly that the decision to build or not build belongs to the people who will bear the costs and share in the benefits, not tech companies or politicians beholden to lobbyists and donors.

More broadly, the public deserves the benefits of AI as soon as there are any, not a generation from now after a hard transition. The government should strike a bargain with the frontier labs, in favor of its constituents: approval for the infrastructure needed to build advanced AI in exchange for concrete benefits for Americans. Imagine three agents available free to every American—a medical assistant, a legal assistant, and a personal tutor. Governments can work hand in hand with labs to ensure these tools are built safely and equitably. People should be able to get help understanding a diagnosis, navigating a dispute with a landlord, or mastering algebra regardless of their income or ZIP code. Imagine support for AI job transitions -– financial help, reskilling, and guaranteed new work. Imagine a fully funded Social Security program. Imagine teachers with enough help and tools to support every student. This is a time for ambitious realism - concrete benefits, with a safety and human-first lens, could make AI worth it for all Americans.

A country that experiences AI only as a threat will -– should –- demand that someone hit the kill switch, but a country whose citizens could have measurably better lives has a reason to insist that America gets it right for them, and for their children.

Data centers, AI public goods, and debates about AI safety are opportunities for Americans to shape how AI takes root in their communities. We will repeatedly face similar choices over energy, over jobs, over education, over how the gains from AI are distributed and who bears the costs. Instead of extreme positions, we must focus on our dual mandate, and deliver outcomes that make Americans’ lives better, and make America more secure.

The nations that leveraged new technology and created broad prosperity emerged as global powers in the Industrial Revolution. We can learn from history to make this technological transition easier for people, and ensure that everyone benefits sooner. Even with pacing its development, this technology is moving fast - the next 36 months will be determinative; we need an engaged public and leaders who understand and can deliver on the dual American mandate of economic prosperity and global AI leadership. That is the task in front of us now.

We should be ambitious enough to build this technology, real about what’s needed to get the benefits to everyday people, and humble enough to accept that no one or two companies get to decide how to manage the consequences of this transition.

America should lead because we have the innovation and realism that can make that bargain work. That’s been our history –- we can make it our future, as well.

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