The Big Nine

by Amy Webb

The Big Nine is the result of hundreds of face-to-face meetings, interviews, and dinners with people working in and adjacent to artificial intelligence. Sewell Chan, Noriyuki Shikata, Arfiya Eri, Joel Puckett, Erin McKean, Bill McBain, Frances Colon, Torfi Frans Olafsson, Latoya Peterson, Rob High, Anna Sekaran, Kris Schenck, Kara Snesko, Nadim Hossain, Megan Carroll, Elena Grewal, John Deutsch, Neha Narula, Toshi Ezoe, Masao Takahashi, Mary Madden, Shintaro Yamaguchi, Lorelei Kelly, Hiro Nozaki, Karen Ingram, Kirsten Graham, Francesca Rossi, Ben Johnson, Paola Antonelli, Yoav Schlesinger, Hardy Kagimoto, John Davidow, Rachel Sklar, Glynnis MacNicol, Yohei Sadoshima, and Eiko Ooka have been generous with their time, perspectives, and insights. Several made introductions to others working on AI and policy to help me further investigate the geopolitical balance and to better understand AI’s opportunities and risks.

  It is because of the US-Japan Leadership Foundation that I met Lieutenant Colonel Sea Thomas, retired Army Major DJ Skelton, Defense Innovation Board executive director Joshua Marcuse, and national security analyst John Noonan. We’ve now spent many days together as USJLP Fellows, and I’m indebted to each of them for their patience explaining the future of warfare, the US military’s role in the Pacific Rim, and China’s various strategic initiatives. I’m especially in awe of the work Joshua has done to bridge the divide between Silicon Valley and Washington, DC. He’s one of AI’s present-day heroes.

  The Aspen Strategy Group offered me an opportunity to present on the future of AI and geopolitics during their annual summer meeting in Colorado, and those conversations helped shape my analysis. My sincerest thanks to Nicholas Burns, Condoleezza Rice, Joseph Nye, and Jonathon Price for the invitation and to Carla Anne Robbins, Richard Danzig, James Baker, Wendy Sherman, Christian Brose, Eric Rosenbach, Susan Schwab, Ann-Marie Slaughter, Bob Zoellick, Philip Zelikow, Dov Zakheim, Laura Rosenberger, and Mike Green for all of their valuable feedback.

  A lot of my thinking happened on the campus of NYU’s Stern School of Business, which has been a tremendously supportive professional home for my research. I’m grateful to Professor Sam Craig for bringing me into the MBA program and for advising me the past few years. I cannot say enough about the incredibly bright, creative MBA students who have taken my classes. Three recent Stern graduates in particular—Kriffy Perez, Elena Giralt, and Roy Levkovitz—were wonderful sounding boards as I modeled the futures of AI.

  I’m lucky to have in my life a group of sages who offer counsel and advice. All of the work I do is better because of them. Danny Stern changed my life a few years ago when he asked me to meet him one day on the NYU campus. He taught me how to think more exponentially and showed me how to make my research connect with much wider audiences. His partner at Stern Strategy Group, Mel Blake, has spent hundreds of hours mentoring me, shaping my ideas, and helping me to see the world around me differently. They are a continual source of inspiration, motivation, and (as they know) perspiration. James Geary and Ann Marie Lipinski at Harvard have been incredibly generous for many years, making it possible for me to host gatherings to talk about the future and to further develop my foresight methodology. James and Ann Marie are consummate advisors. My dear friend and personal champion Maria Popova makes me think bigger thoughts, and then she contextualizes those ideas within her encyclopedic knowledge of literature, arts, and sciences. My incredible daughter, Petra Woolf, never stops asking “what if,” reminding me often of my own cognitive biases when thinking about the future. And as always, I’m grateful to Professor Samuel Freedman at Columbia University.

  My enduring thanks to Cheryl Cooney, who works tirelessly on my behalf and without whom I would get very little done. Regardless of what AGIs might someday be built, I cannot imagine one that could ever replace Cheryl. Emily Caufield—whose patience appears to know no bounds—is the artistic force powering my foresight work, trends, and scenarios. Thanks to Phillip Blanchard for working with me again on fact checking, copy editing, and compiling all of the sources and endnotes for this book, and to Mark Fortier, who helped make sure it was read by the news media and by newsmakers alike, and whose advice was invaluable during the launch process.

  Finally, I owe zettabytes of appreciation to Carol Franco, Kent Lineback, and John Mahaney. As my literary agent, Carol managed the contract for this book. But as my friend, she and her husband, Kent, hosted me at their beautiful home in Santa Fe so that we could develop the architecture and central thesis about the Big Nine. We spent days and nights distilling all of my research and ideas into core arguments, and in between work sessions we strolled around town and had lively discussions at terrific restaurants. It’s because of Carol that a few years ago I met my editor John Mahaney, who I was fortunate enough to work with on my previous book. John is an ideal editor—he asks lots of questions, demands quality reporting, and will keep pushing until the analysis, examples, and details are just right. I wrote this book because I want to shift the conversation about AI’s future, but my motivation wasn’t entirely selfless: working with John again meant an opportunity to spend a year learning from him and improving my writing. John, Kent, and Carol, you’re a formidable team, and I can’t believe how fortunate I am to know you.

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  AMY WEBB is one of America’s leading futurists and is the bestselling, award-winning author of The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream, which explains her method for forecasting the future. She is a professor of strategic foresight at the NYU Stern School of Business and the founder of the Future Today Institute, a leading foresight and strategy firm that helps leaders and their organizations prepare for complex, uncertain futures. Webb is a winner of the Thinkers50 Radar Award, a fellow in the United States–Japan Leadership Program, and a delegate on the former US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission, and she was a Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. She serves as a script consultant for films and shows about technology, science, and the future and also publishes the annual FTI Emerging Tech Trends Report, which has now garnered more than 7.5 million cumulative views worldwide. Learn more at http://www.amywebb.io.

  PRAISE FOR THE BIG NINE

  “The Big Nine is provocative, readable, and relatable. Amy Webb demonstrates her extensive knowledge of the science driving AI and the geopolitical tensions that could result between the US and China in particular. She offers deep insights into how AI could reshape our economies and the current world order, and she details a plan to help humanity chart a better course.”

  —Anja Manuel, Stanford University, cofounder and partner RiceHadleyGates

  “The Big Nine is an important and intellectually crisp work that illuminates the promise and peril of AI. Will AI serve its three current American masters in Washington, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street, or will it serve the interests of the broader public? Will it concentrate or disperse economic and geopolitical power? We can thank Amy Webb for helping us understand the questions and how to arrive at answers that will better serve humanity than our current path. The Big Nine should be discussed in classrooms and boardrooms around the world.”

  —Alec Ross, author of The Industries of the Future

  “The Big Nine makes bold predictions regarding the future of AI. But unlike many other prognosticators, Webb sets sensationalism aside in favor of careful arguments, deep historical context, and a frightening degree of plausibility.”

  —Jonathan Zittrain, George Bemis Professor of International Law and professor of computer science, Harvard University

  “The Big Nine is thoughtful and provocative, taking the long view and most of all raising the right issues around AI and providing a road map for an optimistic future with AI.”

  —Peter Schwartz, author of The Art of the Long View

  “The Big Nine provides seminal arguments on eschewing ‘nowist’ mindsets to avoid allocating human agency to the
corporations developing AI. Webb’s potential scenarios for specific futures are superb, providing detailed visions for society to avoid as well as achieve.”

  —John C. Havens, executive director, IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems, and author of Heartificial Intelligence: Embracing Our Humanity to Maximize Machines

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