The biggest surprise of AI is that it took us by surprise

This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a panopticon of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. Sign up here. AI blew us away. What would Orwell say? Luddite [Bloomberg]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a panopticon of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - AI [blew us away](. - What would [Orwell say](? - Luddites may [have their way](. - Achilles fights [another day](. [Remote Control]( To say that the explosion of artificial intelligence was the greatest shocker of 2023 seems, well, not very shocking. What other contenders did you have in mind — India [reaching]( the moon? The Vatican [giving women]( the vote? Aaron Rodgers’s first [season with the Jets]( lasting just four plays? Important stuff, to be sure, but nothing like the [world-saving](/[apocalypse-inducing]( momentousness of ChatGPT. And, as Tyler Cowen [writes](, there is more to this AI stuff than a single revolutionary advancement: We tend to forget how rapidly huge gains in technology can be made, and how quickly they can change our lives. “We have learned that what may prove to be one of the most important advances in human history can sneak up on most people in little more than a year,” Tyler writes. “We thus need to update our thinking about whether major innovations can come seemingly ‘out of nowhere,’ following periods of relative stagnation.” Expert opinion, Tyler notes, now [expects]( AI to surpass homo sapiens in most intellectual endeavors in less than a decade. “I know many experts in the field who think it will be in less than five years,” he adds. “By some metrics, and at great cost, AGI (artificial general intelligence) might even be possible right now.” So how do we prepare for the day the machines outsmart us? Parmy Olson and Dave Lee [think we can turn]( to a good old-fashioned technology: the printed word. First on their suggested reading list: [The Worlds I See]( by Fei-Fei Li, the co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. “Li weaves the story of her work tightly with her own personal journey: breaking through as an immigrant and building her way up to being one of the most respected figures in her field,” Dave writes. “I found her tales not only fascinating, and humbling, but also a path to sleeping easier at night, glad she’s in our corner.” Parmy’s list starts off on a more depressing note: Kashmir Hill’s [Your Face Belongs to Us]( “explains how a startup called Clearview AI brazenly scraped the internet to amass a database of billions of faces, then worked with dozens of police departments around the US to create a hidden surveillance tool.” Our world is not just turning into a panopticon, Parmy warns, but into a racist one. “Facial recognition software often isn’t trained to recognize the faces of Black people properly,” she explains. “Hill shows the consequences in a terrifying chapter when Robert Julian-Borchak Williams is arrested in front of his family and jailed, all because of a flawed facial ‘match.’ Even when the algorithms are near-perfect, as with Clearview’s, they aren’t designed with civil liberties in mind.” Parmy and Dave give us a couple of titles we all read in high school — or should have, anyway — but need to reconsider the light of a new technological dawn: I, Robot by Isaac Asimov and, of course, George Orwell’s 1984. But the one I’m reading first is [Blood in the Machine]( by Brian Merchant, which is a history the Luddite movement. “It wasn’t really anti-tech at all,” Dave explains. “The Luddites were protesting exploitation, not machines — taking a hammer to equipment was just the means to an end.” And that end hasn’t ended, Dave argues: “The workers marauding through Nottingham in the 19th century are not all that different from the striking Hollywood actors demanding studios offer promises not to replace their talent with AI.” Now that Hollywood is back at work, how about a (better) [remake]( of I, Robot? Bonus Books of the Year: Adrian Wooldridge says 2023 didn’t yield a bumper crop of business tomes. [Read it here](. [Over the Berlin Wall]( Remember the peace dividend? It was a wonderful idea dreamed up by Margaret Thatcher and George H.W. Bush after the fall of the Berlin Wall, led to the only [sublime moment]( of Dan Quayle’s life, and now, [according]( to Bill Ackman, “is no more.” I’ll take the side that says it never was. Its existence was based on three premises: - The world was entering a stage of geopolitical harmony - This would spur global global economic growth - It would also allow the US to slash its defense budget The second, I’ll grant, occurred in spades — so much so that globalization has become a [dirty word](. As for the first: Kuwait, the Balkans, Chechnya, 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine, Ukraine again, etc. And (this opinion will not increase my popularity) the thinking behind third led us to where we are now — the underfunding of the Pentagon, starting under Bill Clinton, has us in a dangerous spot facing an almost-peer military rival in China. So does any of this tell us what our economic “new normal” might be as we head into 2024? Jonathan Levin looks at a few theories. He isn’t much persuaded by Ackman (or [Ken Griffin](): “In this version of the story, the defining features of the coming decade — much like the period from the US involvement in the Vietnam War to the fall of the Berlin Wall — will be a return to geopolitical conflict, recurring supply shocks and higher inflation.” What about the idea that global tensions could significantly hamper the march of globalization? “That’s a logical leap that hasn’t really materialized,” Jonathan writes. “For all Vladimir Putin’s belligerence, Russia doesn’t even crack the top 20 of US trading partners, and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have so far had only short-lived influences on energy markets.”  In other words, our economic “new normal” is, well, anyone’s guess. Another (more optimistic) take is that we are entering something like the late 1990s. “That was a time of resurgent growth driven by increasing labor productivity,” Jonathan writes. “In the popular imagination, a 2020s productivity boom would look something like the one that accompanied the emergence of the internet, except with the proliferation of artificial intelligence instead of email and e-commerce.” It’s enough to make a Luddite weep. Telltale Charts The year 2023 was a record breaker — and in all the wrong ways for the climate. Lara Williams has put together a charticle highlighting the lowlights of higher temperatures. “The extreme weather is just part of the picture,” she writes. “We’re now living in a world that may feel almost contradictory — climate action is accelerating, but our emissions haven’t yet peaked. Meanwhile, Earth just keeps getting hotter. As we enter 2024, we’ll likely see the juxtaposition of these trends increase.” Check out all her data graphics [here](, but as both a scuba diver and a fan of squiggly lines, I’m going to highlight this one: Greece and Turkey have been mixing it up since the abduction of Helen. And while Achilles and Hector didn’t [duel]( over equities, Achilles would have won that inequitable fight as well in 2023. “Greece gave up its independence by adopting the euro, and that led to a brutal depression throughout the last decade as it tried to bring its deficit down to European standards,” [writes]( John Authers. “Turkey, under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, boldly did things differently, applying an idiosyncratic monetary policy that worked on the assumption that raising interest rates would make inflation go up, not down. So, the central bank cut rates under pressure from Erdogan, and the lira tanked, along with Turkish stocks.” Bonus Authers Viewing: Video of Part II of John’s look at Hindsight Capital LLC (which, BTW, doesn’t exist) is [here](. Further Reading The FDIC [needs to go]( to management school. — Bloomberg’s editorial board The Chinese and US militaries [are back on]( speaking terms. — James Stavridis Some other [big stuff happened]( in China this year as well. — Tim Culpan Using economic science to keep your [New Year’s resolutions](. — Betsey Stevenson Step 1: Don’t [get hangry](. — Howard Chua-Eoan Nikki Haley [failed]( a political, and moral, test. — Nia-Malika Henderson The world’s big democracies [are all voting]( in 2024. Should that worry us? — Mihir Sharma Spotify’s CEO [has a broken]( record to fix. — Lionel Laurent ICYMI  Queen Latifah is the [first female rapper]( chosen as a Kennedy Center honoree. Elon Musk is [pushing back]( against rumors of a robot attack at the Giga Texas factory. Maine is the latest state to try and [bar Trump]( from the GOP primary. Kickers This Dutch wrestler says [becoming a Buddhist monk]( has him on an Eightfold Path to the Olympics. Last chance to get your [one-cent bacon cheeseburger](. Britain’s most delicious [political scandal]( is about a wine cellar. Notes: Please send [Jr. Chocolate Frosty]( and feedback to Tobin Harshaw at [tharshaw@bloomberg.net](mailto:jkarl9@bloomberg.net). [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Threads](, [TikTok](, [Twitter](, [Instagram]( and [Facebook](. Follow Us Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can’t find anywhere else. [Learn more](. 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