President Trump just announced the “Genesis Mission” — a 21st century Manhattan Project for U.S. dominance in artificial intelligence (AI) and artificial general intelligence (AGI). With this came an executive order banning state-level AI regulation. For Trump, the future of AI lies with the federal government and a handful of big corporations.

Thanks to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and similar systems, AI is now integrated into our individual and collective lives. Present AIs are narrow; they access patterns in their massive datasets and predict best responses to queries. These narrow AIs don’t “think” in a classical sense, but they do extend human labor and are starting to replace it.

AGI is different. It has the same data access, but it can also think and act independently. It can write its own code and improve itself over time. We don’t have full AGI systems yet, but the Genesis Mission ensures that we will.

What does winning the AGI race mean? A growing body of AI experts and pundits are voicing alarms. Will U.S.-based AGI control all computing? How will AGI systems in China and elsewhere respond? Will AGI-enabled weapons and robots join the fight? 

AGI is expected to be 100 times smarter than humans. Jobs that are mostly “thinking” in nature are at high risk. AGI may support new job categories over time, but short-term disruptions are likely. Job losses in the millions are predicted. How will our economy adjust? How much human suffering is coming? Policy makers must consider such questions now.

Tom Meuser
Portland