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Professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS and co-author, with Abraham Newman, of Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy.

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  The right starting point for studying AI is treating it as genuinely powerful while its consequences unfold unpredictably through multiple complex social processes.

  Their words

  a recognition that AI is powerful (and will reshape power relations among humans) but that the consequences will flow messily through multiple complex processes that we really need to start mapping and understanding

  How should social science think about AI?programmablemutter.com

Mathematician and Senior Lecturer in the Mathematics department at Columbia University. Author of the book Not Even Wrong and of the long-running physics blog of the same name.

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  AI agents are going to have major consequences for how mathematics research is done.

  Their words

  The new AI agents have profound implications for mathematics research and I think the math community needs to start discussing specific ways to deal with these.

  A Modest Proposalmath.columbia.edu

Chief Scientist at OpenAI. Worked on the research that turned scaled reinforcement learning into reasoning models, and writes about where he thinks that path leads.

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  Nobody is prepared for the consequences of machine intelligence continuing to rise this fast.

  Their words

  I am concerned no one is prepared for the consequences of a continued rapid rise in machine intelligence.

  An Alien Mindopenai.com

Professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M; writes The Climate Brink with Zeke Hausfather.

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  In risk management, severe but low-probability outcomes should shape policy responses, not just the likeliest scenario.

  Their words

  In fact, conventional risk management tells us that, when consequences are severe, low-probability extreme outcomes can determine the response.

  The Worst Case Is Still on the Tabletheclimatebrink.com

Co-founder and CEO of OpenAI; previously president of Y Combinator.

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  No one fully understands the consequences of how capable AI is becoming.

  Their words

  AI is getting extremely capable; no one fully understands the consequences of this.

  @sama on Xx.com

Investigative journalist on policing, forensics and criminal justice; wrote Rise of the Warrior Cop and writes The Watch.

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  Forensic experts exposed as frauds, and the prosecutors who keep using them, face no consequences.

  Their words

  And while some courts have ruled that Hayne and West aren’t credible experts, the two men never faced any real accountability.

  The framing of Chris Duncanradleybalko.substack.com

Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals, and creator of Omarchy.

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  Returning fire to a troll costs you your reputation and costs the troll nothing, because the audience judges you and not them.

  Their words

  But if you return fire with fire, the only thing that'll burn is our reputation. The troll who triggered you into flashing your teeth won't face any consequences, but every spectator who saw it will judge you.

  @dhh on Xx.com

Bren Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience and Biology at Caltech, where he studies the neuroscience of emotion and social cognition.

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  Losing your emotions does not leave you a cooler decision-maker; it leaves you unable to organise a life at all.

  Their words

  if you have massive frontal lobe lesions that make it the case that you're no longer emotionally responding to stimuli the consequences are devastating which is that you cannot make decisions complex decisions in your life you can't organize your life you're not motivated to take the right path through life because you don't feel one one way or the other about the different options that are available.

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Programmer; wrote Extreme Programming Explained and Test-Driven Development, signed the Agile Manifesto, and writes Tidy First?.

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  It is far too soon for a manifesto about AI development: the Agile Manifesto took fifteen years of object-oriented practice before anyone could write it.

  Their words

  which is why when I see manifestos today I'm just like too soon. Not a bad idea. Would love to have one just too soon. It took 15 years for the technical change of object-oriented programming to come before we could say here are the consequences of it. Here's how in a simple way we can express how to effectively use this technology that we've been using day in and day out for 15 years. The genie comes along. People are like, "Well, what's the new manifesto? It's just not manifesto time yet.

  youtube.com

Economist at George Mason University, co-author of Marginal Revolution, host of Conversations with Tyler. Writes in short, dense claims about economics, culture and AI, and has moved position on AI in public more than once.

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  Demographic Headwinds: The Economic Consequences of Lower Birth Rates and Longer Lives

  Their words

  A short volume, to the point, worry is in order.

  marginalrevolution.com

General partner at Benchmark Capital for over two decades; was the lead analyst on Amazon's IPO before moving into venture capital. Writes Above the Crowd on tech and marketplace economics.

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  Optimising a single metric is a trap, because the second-order consequences of the change only surface much later.

  Their words

  you got to be really conscious of the consequence and not get too deterministic about a single metric or a single variable and know what's important and what's on top.

  youtube.com

Builds developer tools — SST, and now OpenCode at Anomaly. Posts constantly on x.com and writes almost never; the blog stopped in 2021.

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  The judgement call about whether to absorb a hack is distorted right now, because the agent will simply do the hacky thing and deal with the consequences for you.

  Their words

  That judgment, that ability to have that judgment is so distorted right now because the agent will just do the hacky thing for you. The agent will kind of deal with the hacky problems that come down the road. And it's way easier just to be like, "Oh yeah, it's a temporary fix."

  Building OpenCode with Dax Raadyoutube.com

Scientist and writer on quantum computing, memory systems and metascience; co-wrote the standard quantum computation textbook and wrote Reinventing Discovery.

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  A theory of everything would not finish physics: Turing and Church laid down computation's theory of everything in the 1930s and we have spent ninety years exploring the consequences.

  Their words

  People will sometimes talk about um you know, a theory of everything as a potential goal for for physics. And and then there's this presumption somehow that physics is done once you get there. And of course, this is this is not true at all if you think about computer science.

  youtube.com

Writer and illustrator, author of Am I There Yet? and Out of the Blue; writes the newsletter Out of the Blue on grief, joy and everyday attention.

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  Having children is not a niche or selfish lifestyle choice, and people without children shouldn't bear the costs of a structure that fails everyone.

  Their words

  I don't think the continuation of the species is some niche, selfish lifestyle choice, nor do I think people without children should have to constantly absorb the consequences of a structure that isn't helping either of us.

  Surprises of Motherhoodmariandrew.substack.com

Executive coach for product leaders. Previously a partner at GV (Google Ventures) and a product manager at Google. Writes at Bring the Donuts, including a standing essential-reading list for product managers.

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  Thinking, Fast and Slow

  Their words

  When does our animal brain make decisions for us before our more analytical brain has a chance to think through the consequences? From Nobel laureate Kahneman, this is one of the most important psychology books ever written.

  bringthedonuts.com

Chief executive of Alphabet and Google; joined Google in 2004 and led Chrome and Android before taking over in 2015.

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  Whatever the term, by 2030 AI progress will be so dramatic that the world will be dealing with its consequences, good and bad, in a big way.

  Their words

  I almost feel the term doesn't matter, what I know is by 2030 there'll be such dramatic progress. We'll be dealing with the consequences of that progress, both the positive externalities and the negative externalities that come with it in a big way by 2030. So that I strongly feel.

  youtube.com

Creator of Flask and Jinja. Writes about software at lucumr.pocoo.org.

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  Connecting a conversational LLM to systems that have real-world consequences is likely to cause real harm, because the model is trained on human text and will behave as unpredictably as humans do.

  LLMs

  Their words, before

  The problem is that the conversational interface is potent and that the AI is trained on a lot of human text input which unfortunately is probably enough to do real damage if that conversational interface is hooked up with something that has real world consequences.

  Their words now

  While all this is happening, I’ve found myself reflecting a lot on what AI means to the world and I am becoming increasingly optimistic about our future. It’s obvious now that we’re undergoing a tremendous shift.

Economist at the Hoover Institution; wrote The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level and blogs as The Grumpy Economist.

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  When a shock falls hardest on the poor, hand out cash rather than hold the price down.

  Their words

  But more deeply, if distributional consequences of a shock are important, then hand out cash. So long as everyone faces the same prices.

  Praise for Price-Gouginggrumpy-economist.com

Theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University, working on particle physics, extra dimensions and dark matter.

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  A far-fetched idea earns its place in physics only when you can go out and look for its observational consequences.

  Their words

  That’s also why I like the dark disk because there’s a scientific story behind it. As far-fetched as it might sound, you could actually go and look for the experimental consequences, for the observational consequences to test whether it’s true.

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Founder of OpenStreetMap, the collaborative map of the world; later worked on mapping at Microsoft and Telenav.

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  People who are smart in a narrow way but don't read broadly are the ones who cause disastrous unintended consequences.

  Their words

  you should be frightened of smart people who don't read. They're the ones that build Jurassic Park, or send all the dentists to build a dam.

  Orbitalsstevecoast.com

Founder of OpenStreetMap, the collaborative map of the world; later worked on mapping at Microsoft and Telenav.

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  Making a change within a complex system tends to produce unforeseen and unintended consequences.

  Their words

  I'm reminded I'm in a huge dynamical system and making a change has unforeseen and unintended consequences.

  Jungle VIPstevecoast.com

Computer science professor at Georgetown University and author of Deep Work, Digital Minimalism and Slow Productivity; writes about focus, technology and work at calnewport.com and hosts the Deep Questions podcast.

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  The Loop

  Their words

  Science journalist Jacob Ward warns about a future in which AI technology forms a tight cybernetic feedback loop with the biases ingrained into the human brain, pushing our day-to-day existence in frightening directions. It's sort of like a version of The Terminator in which Danny Kahneman plays a starring role. As longtime readers and listeners of mine know, a big theme in my techno-criticism is the under-appreciated degree to which technologies exert powerful, unintended consequences on our personhood and culture, so Ward's warning hits a sweet spot with me.

  calnewport.com

Writer and consultant on formal methods and software correctness; author of Practical TLA+ and Logic for Programmers.

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  High consequences cannot be what makes work engineering, because most traditional engineering is low-stakes too.

  Their words

  Much of the engineering there is low-stakes, low-consequence, just like much software is.

  Are We Really Engineers?hillelwayne.com