Last week a group of AI workers and leaders published an open letter warning the public and Western governments about the growing dangers of AI. Familiar names such as Dell, Adobe, and General Motors, and Shopify have joined Oracle, Cisco, Anthropic, and OpenAI in call for “collective action on cyber defense.”
On the surface, the letter is a call for collective cyber defense. But what are we defending? The letter is written against the backdrop of all the goods and benefits of our Judeo-Christian, democratic, free market system. The algorithms, mathematics, and machine learning schema are one part of the larger ideological competition between the values structure of the West and its opponents.
First, the fact that this letter exists reminds us of how important free speech and freedom of the press are. These freedoms are not just about airing one’s individual opinions in the privacy of one’s home and family, but rather the opportunity to make, discuss, and debate public policy issues in the court of public opinion. These are experts and concerned tax-paying citizens making a plea for collective action for the common good, and they can do so because we are a free society. These freedoms are networked with other first freedoms, including freedom of religion, the right to assemble, and private property.
Second, the letter reminds us that our democratic free-market system takes for granted the largely invisible structures, including the rule of law, that provide the foundations for social and political order. We take for granted that the public square is governed and constantly reaffirmed by cultural, moral, and legal safeguards such as the fulfillment of contracts, trust, intellectual property protections, individual privacy, competition, and some limited government oversight. These safeguards are rooted in deeper cultural constructs that are a part of our civilizational heritage and must be reaffirmed legally and ethically in each generation.
Third, there is an assumption in this letter that “we the people” should have a level of efficacy and not blindly submit to a preordained AI future. This sense of responsibility, rooted in a tradition of rugged individualism, means that Americans are not subjects, but citizens. We owe those who came before us, and those who come after us, thoughtful action that buttresses our republican order, the rights and privileges of individuals, families, and communities, and a continuing free market characterized by innovation and wealth creation.
Finally, the recent calls for a new level of defense against cyber threats assume that there are rogue governments and nefarious non-state actors who are already using AI tools to sow chaos and destruction. The governments that are most likely to do so are those whose national security strategies tell their own troops and people that they are at war with us, such as communist China and North Korea. The old Marxist-Leninist-Maoist playbook is to spread disinformation, create discord, and promote uncertainty to weaken the resolve of adversaries and create opportunities to strike. It is no wonder that those who learned that playbook, such as today’s communist-legacy Russia, are constantly deploying such cyber warfare strategies.
It may be that we are in a moment like that of the early Cold War in which the genius of our citizenry is needed, in and out of government service, to shape and limit dangerous technologies. Just as the combination of America’s private sector, national security agencies, cultural ethos informed by the just war tradition, and alliances won the Cold War, we once again need that decisiveness of purpose and concentration of forces to take on today’s great challenges.
