Key Points
Eight years ago, the November US election results profoundly shocked the small staff at Backchannel, the boutique tech publication I headed..
On a plane from New York to San Francisco, I wrote a column to answer that impulse, directed as much to myself and my colleagues as it was to readers..
Hundreds of years later, future generations (and possibly Ray Kurzweil) will look back at this time and identify it as the period when microchips and neural net software changed everything..
(For WIREDs institutional view, please note the words of my boss, which I endorse.) So, speaking for myself, I emphatically reprise my 2016 statement of purpose, with a slight tweak: Artificial intelligence is bigger than Donald Trump...
(Sorry, Tim Apple.) If you lose your health care, or your reproductive rights, or find yourself in a deportation camp or a prison cell because of the policies of our returning president, the knowledge that AI, mixed reality, and quantum computers might one day redefine us wont lessen the pain...
