AI Frontiers

The views in this article are those of the authors alone and do not represent those of the Department of Defense, its components, or any part of the US government.

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In a recent interview, Demis Hassabis — co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, a leading AI lab — was asked if he worried about ending up like Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who unleashed the atomic bomb and was later haunted by his creation. Whi...

Since May, Congress has been debating an unprecedented proposal: a 10-year moratorium that would eliminate virtually all state and local AI policies across the nation. This provision, tucked into the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” would prohibit states from enacting or enforcing “any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems” for the ne...

Since 2020, there have been nearly 40 copyright lawsuits filed against AI companies in the US. In this intensifying battle over AI-generated content, creators, AI companies, and policymakers are each pushing competing narratives. These arguments, however, tend to get so impassioned that they obscure three crucial questions that should be addressed separately — yet they rarely are.

First, how does existing copyri...

As AI's transformative potential and national security significance grow, so has the incentive for countries to develop AI capabilities that outcompete their adversaries. Leaders in both the US and Chinese governments have indicated that they see their countries in an arms race to harness the economic and strategic advantages of powerful AI.

Yet as the benefits of AI come thick and fast, so might its risks. In a...

Edward Parker — June 13, 2025

This post originally appeared on RAND.

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When OpenAI released its newest AI models o3 and o4-mini in April, its president Greg Brockman made an intriguing claim: “These are the first models where top scientists tell us they produce legitimately good and useful novel ideas.”

If AI can indeed make scientific discoveries, that would not only have practical impacts for society but wou...

The debate over AI governance has intensified following recent federal proposals for a ten-year moratorium on state AI regulations. This preemptive approach threatens to replace emerging accountability mechanisms with a regulatory vacuum.

In his recent AI Frontiers article, Kevin Frazier argues in favor of a federal moratorium, seeing it as necessary to prevent fragmented state-level liability rules that would s...

One morning in the near future, on far-flung servers many miles from Wall Street, a new type of organization begins buying and selling stock. Its mission: maximize return on investment. It uses a network of AI agents integrated into global trading platforms to buy and sell stock in milliseconds — fast, adaptive, and unburdened by human fatigue.

This is much more sophisticated than today's algorithmic traders. Th...

Over the course of 10 hours this April, a massive power outage swept across Spain and Portugal, causing extensive disruption. The most severe blackout in both countries’ history, it paralyzed entire transport networks and interrupted essential services throughout the Iberian Peninsula, causing estimated economic damages in the billions of euros — and at least eight fatalities.

Weeks earlier, a fire at an electri...

A federal judge recently denied a motion to dismiss a wrongful death lawsuit against Character.AI and Google, allowing the potentially pathbreaking litigation to proceed. This could be a harbinger of coming legal challenges for artificial intelligence developers. The suit was filed by Megan Garcia, whose 14-year-old son, Sewell Setzer III, died by suicide in February 2024 after forming an intense emotional bond ...

Forming and maintaining friendships can be hard, particularly in an age where human interaction is increasingly digital. In a recent interview with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg claimed that the average American has fewer than three friends. “There are all these things that are better about physical connections when you can have them,” he said. “But the reality is that people just don't ...

Since 2022, I have reported on Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, witnessing firsthand the rapid evolution of technology on the battlefield. Embedded with drone units, I have seen how technology has evolved, with each side turning once-improvised tools into cutting-edge systems that dictate life and death.

In the early months of the war, Ukrainian soldiers relied on off-the-shelf drones for reconnaissance ...

Much of the discussion around AI safety is motivated by concerns around existential risk: the idea that autonomous systems will grow smarter than humans and go on to eradicate our species, either deliberately or as an unintended consequence.

The founders of the AI safety movement took these possibilities seriously when many people still brushed them off as science fiction. Nick Bostrom's 2014 book Superintellige...

US export controls are meant to keep advanced AI chips out of rival hands — but tens of thousands slip through each year. A new bill aims to change that by checking where these chips end up.

US Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK) introduced the Chip Security Act on May 9, which, if enacted, will require “a location verification mechanism on export-controlled advanced chips.” A bipartisan House companion bill was introduce...

In March this year, Google DeepMind announced it was deprioritizing its work on mechanistic interpretability. The following month, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay advocating for greater focus on “mechanistic interpretability” and expounding his optimism about achieving “MRI for AI” in the next 5-10 years. While policymakers and the public tend to assume interpretability would be a good thing, there...

This post was cross-published on the author's Substack, Rising Tide.

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Historically, the way we’ve dealt well with rapidly evolving uncertain processes is classical liberalism.
-Dwarkesh Patel, X

I wasn’t expecting a book from 1998 to explain the 2023-2024 AI safety wars, but Virginia Postrel's The Future and Its Enemies — which I picked up at the recommendation of libertarian AI policy wonk Adam Thiere...

In 1943, a new town appeared in the mountains of northern New Mexico. It didn’t show up on any maps. Families arrived by train under code names. Scientists were issued ration books and cover stories. Children went to school behind fences, while their parents worked on a secret project that would change the world. The town was Los Alamos. It was the home of the Manhattan Project.

Built almost o...

If AI agents can do your job better and faster, what's left for you to do?

AI agents are already taking over a range of human tasks. Specialized AI agents are at work right now in customer service, drug discovery, and software development, increasing productivity and speed-to-market by 50% or more, according to one study.

This may be just the beginning of a drastic overhaul of the nature of work itself. In a not...

The United States and China are in a fierce competition to develop and deploy more capable AI systems, as well as to control the AI supply chain. Each side is driven by logical geopolitical and economic objectives. However, unchecked escalation from either carries serious risks that could undermine global security.

Although China has historically lagged in AI development, it has spent the last decade heavily inv...

For years, people have cautioned we wait to do anything about AI until it starts demonstrating “dangerous capabilities.” Those capabilities may be arriving now.

Virology knowledge has been limited to a small number of experts. Expertise in dual-use fields like virology is difficult to attain, with people completing multiple degrees and dedicating their careers to reaching the forefront of research. Where knowled...