The thing no species has ever doneThe thing no species has ever done
Here is the fact that should anchor every AI policy discussion and never does: no species in the history of life has successfully managed an evolutionary pressure. Not one. When the environment shifts — a new predator, a cooling climate, an oxygen catastrophe — lineages do exactly two things. They adapt, meaning their variation happens to contain something the new environment rewards. Or they go extinct. There is no third drawer labeled "negotiated a slower rate of change with the environment."
The trilobites did not lobby the Permian. The Irish elk did not retrain its antlers. What looks, in hindsight, like a species "responding intelligently" to pressure was always just the survivors — the fraction of pre-existing variation that the new conditions happened to favor. Selection does not improve the unfit. It deletes them and keeps the rest.
AI is a selection pressure on the economy. It is changing the fitness landscape — the map of which capabilities, firms, and skills get rewarded. Darwin's first move as AI czar would be to stop everyone from speaking as if America could choose whether to experience the pressure. You cannot. The only live variable is your position relative to it: selector or selected.
Here is the fact that should anchor every AI policy discussion and never does: no species in the history of life has successfully managed an evolutionary pressure. Not one. When the environment shifts — a new predator, a cooling climate, an oxygen catastrophe — lineages do exactly two things. They adapt, meaning their variation happens to contain something the new environment rewards. Or they go extinct. There is no third drawer labeled "negotiated a slower rate of change with the environment."
The trilobites did not lobby the Permian. The Irish elk did not retrain its antlers. What looks, in hindsight, like a species "responding intelligently" to pressure was always just the survivors — the fraction of pre-existing variation that the new conditions happened to favor. Selection does not improve the unfit. It deletes them and keeps the rest.
AI is a selection pressure on the economy. It is changing the fitness landscape — the map of which capabilities, firms, and skills get rewarded. Darwin's first move as AI czar would be to stop everyone from speaking as if America could choose whether to experience the pressure. You cannot. The only live variable is your position relative to it: selector or selected.