Best Of: Who Wins — and Who Loses — in the A.I. Revolution?

This past year, we’ve witnessed considerable progress in the development of artificial intelligence, from the release of the image generators like DALL-E 2 to chat bots like ChatGPT and Cicero to a flurry of self-driving cars. So this week, we’re revisiting some of our favorite conversations about the rise of A.I. and what it means for the world. Today’s conversation is with Sam Altman. He’s the C.E.O. of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. When I talked to him in June 2021, ChatGPT was still over a year away from being available to the public for testing. But the A.I. developments since then have only increased the salience of the questions Altman raised in his 2021 essay “ Moore’s Law for Everything .” Altman’ argument is this: Since the 1970s, computers have gotten exponentially better even as they’re gotten cheaper, a phenomenon known as Moore’s Law. Altman believes that A.I. could get us closer to Moore’s Law for everything: it could make everything better even as it makes it cheaper. Housing, health care, education, you name it. But what struck me about his essay is that last clause: “if we as a society manage it responsibly.” Because, as Altman also admits, if he is right th…