Donald Trump Isn’t the Only Chaos Agent

Eight years ago, the November US election results profoundly shocked the small staff at Backchannel, the boutique tech publication I headed. The morning after, an editor posted on our Slack that working on a technology story seemed tone-deaf, if not futile. 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. I argued that regardless of the enormity of this event, one thing hadn’t changed; the biggest story of our time was still the technological revolution we were living through. Disruptive politicians, even destructive ones, may come and go—or refuse to go. But the chip, the network, the mobile device, and all they entailed were changing humanity, and maybe what it will mean to be human. Our job was to chronicle that epic transformation, no matter who was politically in charge. The headline of my column was “The iPhone Is Bigger Than Donald Trump.”

This week, Trump was once again elected president despite … oh hell, I won’t go through the litany of what would seem to be slam-dunk disqualifiers. You’ve heard it all, and to the majority of voters it doesn’t matter. It’s an unbelievable story, and the next few years will undoubtedly be the stuff of history. Maybe not in a good way. Maybe in a very bad way for a country where many expected to celebrate its continuing values on America’s 250th birthday. (In the spirit of unity, I’ll use the “maybe” qualifier since losers should be humble, and who knows what’s ahead.)

Yet I’m not budging from the thought I had in 2016. As Stewart Brand once said, “Human nature doesn’t change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly.” What is happening in technology and science remains the activity that will ultimately make the biggest impact on our species. 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. And who was that strongman with the funny hair who crashed the country that used to occupy real estate in the Western Hemisphere? I no longer run a publication and instead represent but a single voice in a much larger staff. (For WIRED’s 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.

Of course journalists must cover Trump’s second presidency vigorously, with relentless demands for accountability. In the short term—for some of us codgers it may be all of our remaining term!—what happens in our community and country will have a bigger influence on our daily lives than the latest version of Claude, ChatGPT, or even Apple Intelligence. (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 won’t lessen the pain.

Also, those of us covering tech will definitely wind up reporting on the Trump presidency; policy as always affects the course of technology. (Remember, the US government produced that thing called the internet.) Right now a debate is raging about how, or whether, we should regulate or restrain AI, a technology which some refer to as “the last invention.” I’m already hearing discussions about the new administration nixing the elaborate executive order on AI that Joe Biden mandated. Some worry that the new president’s mega-adviser Elon Musk—who has his own AI company and builds AI into his other enterprises, like Tesla and Neuralink—will have an outsize and possibly inappropriate influence on government policies and contracts. I’ve also heard speculation that the movement to regulate AI might be, um, trumped by the threat of China’s full-throated efforts in the field. That’s important, because the ground rules of today’s AI, and the quirks of its inventors, may affect whether the worst fears about the technology come true.

That’s why, the day after Donald Trump got reelected, I visited an AI company and interviewed one of its leaders and a top engineer. Yes, on the walk back to the office I thought about the election results and got depressed all over again. But I will finish the article about that company, and then do another, sticking to the tech beat for as long as my broken heart keeps beating. AI, after all, is still the biggest story in town.