Plot Twist
The Job I Didn't See Coming
When I began writing Ideal Life—my novel about a woman startup founder who invents a technology that can either help the world or be exploited by it—I expected it to be a story about the over-optimization of our lives.
But sometimes, our stories take an unexpected turn. For Ideal Life, I spent months doing research about Silicon Valley and its values and culture, and in the process, I found myself taking notes that had nothing to do with my original plot. I was drawn over and over again to questions about AI safety and the people trying to build guardrails for a technology that’s evolving faster than our ability to think clearly about it.
And somewhere during that research, a mental shift happened. The questions my main character Talia was asking became questions I was asking, too, not only as a novelist but also as a person living in a world where these choices are no longer hypothetical.
So here’s the news: I’ve accepted the role of Editor at the Center for AI Safety.
I know. I can almost hear some of you re-reading that sentence.
The Center for AI Safety is a nonprofit. They are nonpartisan and not affiliated with any AI company. They are dedicated to reducing societal-scale risks from artificial intelligence. They do research, they educate policymakers, and they work to make sure the people making decisions about this technology have the information they need to make good ones.
The Center for AI Safety is not a cheerleader for AI. They are the people asking hard questions about it.
And that’s what drew me in. Two years ago, early AI was suggesting we put glue on pizza. That was easy to laugh off. But now the technology has progressed with a speed that’s both genuinely exciting (think medical breakthroughs, scientific discovery) and genuinely sobering. We’re at an inflection point, and the decisions being made right now about how AI is integrated into our lives, who gets to use it and how, and what’s protected and what isn’t, will shape things for a long time. I’d rather be in the room where those conversations are happening than watching from the outside.
To be clear: I am a writer, and I have not stopped caring about the things you care about, like copyright, the irreplaceable nature of human imagination, and the fact that a novel written by a person who has lived and grieved and experienced real life is a fundamentally different thing than text generated by a machine.
I carry all of that with me into this work. It’s part of why I wanted to do it.
I am, as ever, optimistic about the future. Whether you are a long-time reader of my novels or only recently found me through The Incredible Kindness of Paper, you know that I always choose to believe in humanity. I always believe we can make a positive difference if we try. And with both my new role at the Center for AI Safety and my next book (Ideal Life comes out in August), I am grateful for a chance to play a part—however small—in where we go from here.
Currently reading:
Mornings (one chapter of a classic every day at breakfast): Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Evenings (phone off at 8:30pm!): The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett