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…