The New Fire
The New Fire: War, Peace, and Democracy in the Age of AI
Ben Buchanan & Andrew Imbrie
Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the modern world. It is ubiquitous—in our homes and offices, in the present and most certainly in the future. Today, we encounter AI as our distant ancestors once encountered fire.
If we manage AI well, it will become a force for good, lighting the way to many transformative inventions. If we deploy it thoughtlessly, it will advance beyond our control. If we wield it for destruction, it will fan the flames of a new kind of war, one that holds democracy in the balance.
As AI policy experts Ben Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie show in The New Fire, few choices are more urgent—or more fascinating—than how we harness this technology and for what purpose. The new fire has three sparks: data, algorithms, and computing power. These components fuel viral disinformation campaigns, new hacking tools, and military weapons that once seemed like science fiction. To autocrats, AI offers the prospect of centralized control at home and asymmetric advantages in combat.
It is easy to assume that democracies, bound by ethical constraints and disjointed in their approach, will be unable to keep up. But such a dystopia is hardly preordained. Combining an incisive understanding of technology with shrewd geopolitical analysis, Buchanan and Imbrie show how AI can work for democracy. With the right approach, technology need not favor tyranny.
Praise for The New Fire
- “The New Fire is an essential guide to the age of artificial intelligence written by two of its leading scholars. Ben Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie help the reader understand the incredible promises and daunting perils of AI, while exploring the dramatic impact it could have on geopolitics in the decades ahead.” – Madeleine Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State
- The New Fire provides a brilliant, exceedingly readable examination of the impact of artificial intelligence on all imaginable endeavors from war and peace to politics. It is equal parts highly informative, wonderfully descriptive, and more than a bit terrifying!” – General David Petraeus, U.S. Army (Ret.), and former Director of the CIA
- “Mixing technical depth, history, ethical philosophy and penetrant analysis, Buchanan and Imbrie offer a comprehensive perspective on the promise and perils of machine learning and artificial intelligence.” – Vint Cerf, Internet Pioneer
- “Buchanan and Imbrie have created a highly readable walk through the history of machine learning and AI, using many original interviews to show us the personalities who made their mark in the field over a remarkably short period. Importantly, the book focuses as powerfully on the hope that AI brings to humanity as it does on fear—too often the dominant theme in this age of AI.” – Rose Gottemoeller, Steven Házy Lecturer, Freeman-Spogli Institute, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University
Reviews
Selected as one of the The Next Big Idea Club’s Season 18 Nominees
Nature: “Artificial intelligence (AI) is not like electricity, but like fire, say Ben Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie — academic specialists in emerging technology — in their authoritative, coruscating analysis of its current and future significance. Its potential impact ranges from illuminating to catastrophic, according to three rival and sometimes overlapping views from observers whom they label “evangelists, warriors and Cassandras”. “Three sparks ignite the new fire,” say the authors: data, algorithms and computing power.”
The Cipher Brief: “Buchanan and Imbrie provide a necessary corrective, setting out the potential and the perils of AI without bending into Pollyannish optimism.”
Engingeering & Technology: ‘The New Fire’ by Ben Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie
Engadget: Hitting the Books – The Soviets once tasked an AI with our mutually assured destruction