AI risk is real. Ceding the technology to the Chinese is an even bigger danger
“If you’re worried about a bear market, sooner or later you’re going to be right.But think about how much money you’re leaving on the table.”Those were the words of a venerable market sage who helped school me on the vicissitudes of Wall Street many years ago.
They are also words to live by whether you’re trading stocks, planning your next career move, or weighing if we should ditch AI because it’s a supposedly apocalyptic technology.Yes, AI is driving up electricity bills and crimping some water supplies, and it could make humans slaves to robots or start World War III.But what is the risk to mankind if we instead decide to do nothing? Will we be better off ceding this technology to the Chinese? Would we be safer if we stopped all AI development including potentially game-changing health research?If history is any guide, the risk of sitting on the sidelines is always greater than the downside of taking calculated risks that can be managed.
The best Wall Street minds I have observed over the years, from the legendary trader Alan “Ace” Greenberg to empire builders like Jamie Dimon and Larry Fink, never walked away from market risk because they could lose money.For all the possible landmines of risk taking — and they are too many to calculate — they knew there were always many more good trades and deals to be had.Imagine if we walked away from cars because of environmental fears stoked by “experts” like Al Gore and Greta Thunberg.Remember the Y2K hysteria of the late 1990s? Headline-grabbing warnings that the internet could suffer a massive cardiac arrest — taking our energy and security infrastructure with it — ended with a shrug.
The internet poses many risks, from exposing our children to predators to facilitating terrorism, but consider a world without it.For decades, the late Ace Greenberg famously cashed in losses so he could pursue the next big winning stock trade.Would Larry Fink have created the largest money management fir...