False economy What’s in it for me? Understand what makes the

To safeguard the future of AI, the United 
States and its allies need to develop the right 
policies and international cooperation.
AI could provide us with tremendous benefits, 
but it could also lead us into many dangers. How 
do we ensure we can reap the former while 
avoiding the latter?
In the United States, the answer is clear: the 
country’s major tech companies need to reorient 
their AI research and development around 

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humanistic values, prioritizing the pursuit of 
humanity’s best interests over corporate profit. 
For example, before releasing any new AI 
system to the market, companies should safely 
and thoroughly test them – not just to see if they 
work, but also to see if they would have any 
unintended negative consequences on society. 
In the near future, one way to do this could be to 
use existing AI to conduct simulations of the 
societal impact of new AI.
But under present circumstances, that’s all 
wishful thinking. Even if companies sincerely 
wanted to do it, they’d still be pressured by 
relentless market forces into developing and 
releasing unvetted AI products as quickly as 
possible. Unless those forces can be mitigated, 
it would be unrealistic to expect companies to 
exercise self-restraint.
That’s where the government needs to step in by 
creating 
and 
implementing 
a 
robust, 
comprehensive national policy toward AI. That 
doesn’t just mean developing new laws, 
regulations and agencies to ensure that tech 
companies are complying with legal and ethical 
standards. It also means pumping enormous 
amounts of funding into the AI industry. This 
steady infusion of cash would remove the 
pressure to rush products onto the market and 
rake in profits as quickly as possible.
But to succeed at reshaping the future of AI, the 
United States can’t go it alone. It also needs to 
enlist the help of its allies. To that end, the 
United States, the EU and other allied countries 
like Japan and Canada should form a Global 
Alliance of Intelligence Augmentation or GAIA. 
Guided by humanistic values, this new 
international body would bring together a broad 
array of leaders and experts: not just politicians 
and AI researchers, but also economists, 
sociologists, political scientists and futurists.
Working together with the help of GAIA, the US-
allied governments and companies would be 
able to share knowledge and build on each 
other’s advancements. The resulting progress 
and prosperity would make rival powers like 
China want to join GAIA so that it wouldn’t be left 
behind. But in order to join GAIA, these powers 
would have to agree to adhere to GAIA’s guiding 
values.
The stage would thus be set for humanity to 
enjoy the enormous benefits of AI without falling 
prey to its risks.