Scarcity is the natural state of the world, but man is curious and innovative, ingenious and resourceful, eager to operate on the world as he finds it and to improve his condition. “We speak of art as distinguished from nature; but art itself is natural to man,” the Scottish thinker Adam Ferguson wrote. “He is in some measure the artificer of his own frame, as well as of his fortune, and is destined, from the first age of his being, to invent and contrive.” This disposition has produced innovations from the wheel and the plow to the steam engine, the telegraph, and the airplane — and, in an age whose history is increasingly being written in ones and zeroes, the digital panoply of the internet and artificial intelligence (AI).

But with every batch of innovation and economic progress comes a fit of techno-skepticism and panic; the Luddite impulse will never be quelled entirely. Most recently, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) introduced “legislation that would enact a reasonable pause to the development of AI to ensure the safety of humanity.” ….

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