James Banks is a writer who contributed to The Weekly Standard between 2012 and 2014. His articles for the magazine explored topics related to technology and politics.
The failure to explore and monitor the threat [of dangerous artificial intelligence] is almost society-wide. But that failure does not . . . alter the fact that we will have just one chance to establish a positive coexistence with beings whose intelligence is greater than our own.
Soviet history has crystallized in Western memory as a conflict between apparatchiks and heroes. The apparatchiks were ideologically rigid autocrats and pandering toadies, while the heroes—such as Solzhenitsyn, Havel, and Sharansky—were the voices of humanity, reverberating until they eventually…