“Glowering doomers predict that vast cyber-minds – cold and unsympathetic – will crush old-style, legacy humanity. Or else render us irrelevant. Moot. Meanwhile, the geniuses who are fostering the artificial intelligence boom cling to clichés that are rooted in the worst traits of our human past, or else cheap sci-fi. Critics demand state regulation, or ‘kill switches,’ or coercive programming. Or else that we should seek a fabled soft-landing with AI by ‘teaching ethical values’ to synthetic minds who see innumerable counterexamples in their training sets.
Many of the tools we’ll need, in order to achieve ‘alignment’ with artificial intelligence, are already extant in modern society. They are found in the myriad ways in which modern citizens interact with each other. And in how we raise our biological children. Tools that we used to build a gradually improving, enlightenment civilization. Tools such as reciprocal competition among humans – e.g., between lawyers or businesses or philosophers or scientists… a method that could be applied to synthetic beings, who might then hold each other accountable. It’s really the only method that ever tamed human predators and enhanced outcomes. It also offers solutions to many of the AI quandaries that will arise, ways to transform a danger-fraught era into one that offers positive outcomes to us all.”
This short essay response was written in January 2026 in reply to the question: “AI systems are likely to begin to play a much more significant role in shaping our decisions, work and daily lives. How might individuals and societies embrace, resist and/or struggle with such transformative change? As opportunities and challenges arise due to the positive, neutral and negative ripple effects of digital change, what cognitive, emotional, social and ethical capacities must we cultivate to ensure effective resilience? What practices and resources will enable resilience? What actions must we take right now to reinforce human and systems resilience? What new vulnerabilities might arise and what new coping strategies are important to teach and nurture?” This and 200-plus additional essay responses are included in the 2026 report “Building a Human Resilience Infrastructure for the AI Age.”