Yes: beware of <em> hallucinated polarization </em> within the AI community — “doomers vs. accelerationists.”

I am <em> optimistic </em> . Many democracies are at <em> peak polarization </em> ; people in multiple parties are tired of <em> extremes </em> dominating the megaphone. AI can <em> scale broad listening </em> . Traditional polling collapses nuance into a Likert tick; <em> deliberative, generative polling </em> — ...

As routine tasks automate, workweeks likely <em> compress </em> (five to four to three to two days), freeing time for <em> civic engagement </em> , <em> community </em> and <em> spiritual </em> life. People will seek meaning in <em> co‑creation </em> rather than zero‑sum competition. Taiwan’s <em> 2019 curriculum reform ...

Less routine work; more civic meaning and participation.

I have said publicly (e.g., in an interview with <em> Nick Thompson </em> at <em> The Atlantic </em> ) that I would accept claims about AI <em> consciousness </em> if a <em> randomly selected, well‑informed citizens’ jury </em> , using <em> transparent evidence </em> , deliberated and chose to <em> ...

People will increasingly attribute <em> experience </em> — even <em> qualia </em> — to AI agents; some will argue for their <em> consciousness </em> and <em> moral standing </em> . As <em> vertical authorities </em> (ministers, scholars, journalists) lose automatic deference, because anyone can summon agents that <em> speak with ...

<em> Trust re‑roots horizontally </em> as institutional authority weakens.

In the near future, we move from <em> input‑output </em> to <em> experiential </em> AI agents. Systems will not wait for prompts; they will <em> explore </em> , <em> collaborate </em> and <em> accumulate experience </em> . Much current progress — e.g., <em> coordination for autonomous robots </em> (avoiding collisions) ...

Today, AI systems <em> infer from data </em> to generate <em> predictions, recommendations, content or decisions </em> that <em> affect an environment </em> — a broad definition consistent with the <em> OECD </em> , the <em> EU AI Act </em> and recent U.S. policy language.

<em> Care ethics </em> addresses <em> radical asymmetry </em> between caregiver and cared‑for. As <em> Geoffrey Hinton </em> suggested with the “maternal instinct” metaphor: a <em> gardener </em> moves far faster than the <em> plants </em> , but chooses to act at <em> plant speed </em> . Imbuing AI with ...

Humanity already forms <em> super‑intelligences </em> through institutions and corporations. AI agents add <em> bandwidth and speed </em> — e.g., one “mind” with <em> many bodies </em> . This breaks simple <em> utilitarian </em> calculus (machines can optimize at scales and speeds that dominate the utility ledger), and <em> rights‑based ...

I advocate for an <em> ethics of civic care </em> multi‑agent futures with radical asymmetry.

The PRC will likely pursue standards leadership — its <em> 5G </em> strategy is the playbook. The U.S. <em> Clean Network </em> initiative previously checked <em> Huawei/ZTE </em> in core infrastructure across allies. In AI, however, the gap is <em> smaller </em> : the U.S. has <em> more compute </em> ...

Expect a <em> standards </em> contest, but less asymmetry than <em> 5G </em> .

Some labs in the Bay Area still frame a <em> vertical </em> race to <em> superintelligence </em> , but policy momentum — and needs outside a few hubs — point to <em> diffusion, interoperability and local steerability </em> .

Most countries want <em> steerable, “no‑strings‑attached” </em> technology they can <em> govern locally </em> . <em> Open, interoperable models </em> and tooling set norms — much as the world standardized on <em> TCP/IP </em> . That is why I emphasize <em> defense‑dominant open safety </em> : shared safety tech makes ...

The main race is <em> horizontal diffusion and standards </em> , not a vertical dash to a singleton.

On OpenAI specifically: my understanding is they <em> delayed </em> releasing certain <em> GPT‑OSS </em> models until they could reduce <em> offense‑dominant </em> misuse in <em> bio </em> and <em> cyber </em> . When open releases <em> do not </em> materially raise those risks, commercial and open incentives can align.

Open releases of <em> previous‑generation models </em> enable research on <em> steerability </em> , <em> mechanistic interpretability </em> and <em> scalable oversight </em> . Frontier labs can then adopt those improvements. <em> John Carmack </em> at <em> id Software </em> open‑sourced prior engines not out of pure altruism, but to ...

The tension is real but <em> manageable </em> — <em> and often productive </em> .

That logic informed <em> ROOST </em> — <em> Robust Open Online Safety Tools, </em> which I launched with <em> Yann LeCun </em> and <em> Eric Schmidt </em> at the <em> Paris AI Action Summit </em> . Take <em> synthetic CSAM </em> : a <em> federation </em> of mid‑size platforms (e.g., ...

The <em> 1990s cryptography wars </em> taught us that: strong crypto (e.g., <em> PGP </em> ) was once treated as a munition under export controls, yet secure practice ultimately came from <em> open algorithms, open reference implementations, responsible disclosure and broad red teaming </em> . Today even <em> post‑quantum cryptography ...

In <em> defense‑dominant </em> domains — when it is easier to defend than to attack — <em> openness increases security </em> .

For reference, I am developing a microsite called the <em> “Six Pack of Care” </em> — practical components for deploying civic‑care systems at scale.

Polarization, manipulation and degraded shared reality are already her — often amplified by <em> misaligned recommender systems </em> , <em> synthetic media </em> and tailored persuasion. My reframing is: do not stop at <em> harm mitigation </em> (where “success” looks like nothing happening). Build <em> pro‑social sense‑making </em> that measurably ...

The utilitarian lens has limits, but it is right about <em> immediate </em> catastrophic risks to <em> epistemic security </em> .

I am presently working in Oxford’s <em> Ethics in AI Institute </em> (distinct from the <em> Future of Humanity Institute </em> ) as an AFP fellow and continue conversations across these communities.

1. <em> Utilitarian / existential risk and benefit. </em> Strong in Silicon Valley and Oxford‑adjacent work — <em> Nick Bostrom </em> , <em> Toby Ord </em> , <em> Anders Sandberg </em> , and others — framing <em> x‑risk </em> and <em> long‑term benefits </em> (e.g., <em> Superintelligence </em> , <em> The ...

I see <em> three live traditions </em> :

It is not only human–human; we increasingly see <em> human–agent </em> , <em> agent–agent </em> , and even <em> human–animal </em> mediation via AI. We explicitly avoid framing AI as an end state like a “technological singularity.” The very name <strong> Plurality </strong> was chosen to contrast with <em> “Singularity” ...

We emphasize <em> attentiveness </em> , <em> responsibility </em> , <em> competence </em> , <em> responsiveness </em> and <em> plurality </em> connecting them so that conflict becomes <em> fuel for co‑creation </em> . AI amplifies both the <em> breadth </em> of conversation (translation, summarization, bridging across communities) and its <em> ...

The book centers on <em> civic care </em> ; AI is instrumental to achieving it.

I actually entered the field early. I started programming in <em> 1989 </em> . The <em> Tiananmen </em> crackdown shaped my family’s attention to democracy and autonomous communication systems — my father’s thesis explored those dynamics. After the <em> Berlin Wall </em> fell, he went to Germany for PhD studies; ...

We pioneered <em> sense‑making and bridging systems </em> : qualitative aggregation of public preferences into <em> “good‑enough group selfies” </em> that allow the public to steer policy. We used those methods on issues like <em> deepfake regulation </em> and designed <em> codes of conduct for AI agents </em> entering society. ...

I served as Taiwan’s first <em> digital minister </em> — sometimes described as a “cyber ambassador,” where <em> cyber </em> comes from <em> kybernētēs </em> (Greek for “sea captain”) — and my focus was using AI‑augmented tools to help society coordinate, with over <em> 7 years </em> in the Cabinet, ...

My work is about societal <em> steering </em> of AI to foster cooperation.

And thank you for agreeing to donate this transcript to the public domain. For context, I’ve published <em> 2,000+ public meetings </em> over the past decade, so I am very comfortable with open publication.

Yes, literally in the future. Doing well, thank you — and yes, please go ahead and record.

Let’s do that. I’ll send you a link.

Thank you. I look forward to your research. About the transcript: do you want me to embark on it somehow, or can we just clean it up together and publish?

No democracy is an island—not even Taiwan. Or many islands—connected by microwave.

I’m happy you’re physically in Taiwan as our most recent urgency plays out—from bridging to radicalization to anti‑fragility and now healing. Intergenerational unity held this time; you don’t see elders and young people polarized. There was some risk in the four weeks leading up to the first recall vote, but ...

I appreciate your thoughtful questions.

“Achieve” is a progressive framing. I identify as a Taoist, or conservative anarchist. <em> Conservative </em> means we conserve the interplay between cultures—the pluralistic now—resisting homogenization or polarization into binaries. <em> Anarchist </em> means voluntary association, non‑coercion, shifting from vertical control to horizontal coordination and trust. I wouldn’t say I ...

Exactly. I’m a sci‑fi geek too—I have a tattoo on the back of my neck where the plug would go.

In Taiwanese Mandarin, <em> shùwèi </em> (數位) means both “digital” and ”plural”. So I’d say: digital democracy uses digital means to provide groups with <em> group selfies </em> —reflections of the polity in high‑bandwidth, low‑latency ways—so they can craft measures everyone can live with.

Right. We don’t want to be tethered to proprietary stacks (e.g., Gemini only), hence the port from Jigsaw to GPT‑OSS.

You can reinterpret <em> Join </em> , vTaiwan, etc., as civic‑care projects—and our AI work as aligning models to that field. In Taipei and Tainan, our 2023 “alignment assemblies” produced different <em> constitutions </em> (model specs) city by city. So “sovereign AI” isn’t national unison but <em> nested stewardship </em> ...

Thin metrics—the Aladdin’s‑lamp/parasitic‑AI problem in which a “wish” of just a few words can lead to overly broad or creative interpretations by the AI—may lead to sycophancy, addiction, over‑reliance, power concentration, and out‑of‑control risks. These thin vertical alignment risks can be easily rectified by relying on thick horizontal relational fields. ...

It’s my Oxford research topic (with the Institute for Ethics in AI) through next May. My proposal is “6pack.care”—a “six‑pack of care.” Instead of aligning AI vertically (a slave to a master—CEO, dictator, or a thin metric like engagement), we propose <em> public AI </em> aligned horizontally to a thick ...