The White House is portraying the race to adopt AI as an existential crisis. It’s the next Manhattan Project, they say, a technology so important it will require an unprecedented build out of energy infrastructure and massive data centers. But the Manhattan Project was a government-led technological drive whereas AI is led by salesmen and corporations.

What could possibly go wrong?

On this episode of Angry Planet, Ben Buchanan is here to tell us about the government’s role in fostering AI. Buchanan was an AI advisor during the Biden administration where he helped write the policy that paved the way for private-public partnerships between DC and AI companies. Now he’s a professor at John Hopkins and, though he’s still an AI advocate, he’s got concerns. Slop, public land use, and autonomous weapons. We get into it all on this episode of Angry Planet.

• AI as an arm’s race
• Nukes are cheaper than AI
• Government’s role in the construction of AI infrastructure
• What are the stakes of the AI competition between the United States and China?
• “More powerful AI systems will enable more powerful cyber operations.”
• “It’s the hardest thing we do as a species.”
• Turning over federal lands to data centers
• How Trump is shooting himself in the foot regarding AI
• “We’re just chasing power all across the country.”
• “We’re going to be building data centers for a very long time.”
• How the AI expert uses AI
• “There’s a long list of concerns.”
• Accident reports and autonomous weapons

The AI Grand Bargain

Ben Buchanan

DOE on federal lands for data centers

Anthropic Has a Plan to Keep Its AI From Building a Nuclear Weapon. Will It Work?

DoD Direction 3000.09 Autonomy in Weapons Systems

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