One thing we can be sure about AI -- because we are told it so often and at so increasingly high a pitch -- is that whatever it actually is, the national interest demands more of it. And we need it now, or else China will beat us there, and we certainly wouldn't want that, would we? What does it look like, how would it work, and how would it change our society? The race is on, and if America doesn't start taking AI seriously, we're going to find ourselves the losers in an ever-widening Dystopia Gap. Savage and Nancy Scola exemplifies the mix of maximum alarm and minimum meaning that's become so typical in our national (and nationalist) discussion around artificial intelligence.

AI, which is supposed to stand for "artificial intelligence," now spans applications from cameras to the military to medicine. One thing we can be sure about AI -- because we are told it so often and at so increasingly high a pitch -- is that whatever it actually is, the national interest demands more of it. And we need it now, or else China will beat us there, and we certainly wouldn't want that, would we? What does it look like, how would it work, and how would it change our society? The race is on, and if America doesn't start taking AI seriously, we're going to find ourselves the losers in an ever-widening Dystopia Gap.