I remember the first time I walked into the Oval Office to brief President Biden. I'd just been appointed as the White House Special Advisor for AI. The President sat behind the Resolute desk and began with a single question: "What is the worst harm that AI could enable?" I had no shortage of worries. We talked about the pace of technological progress — how, thanks to better chips and algorithms, what was cutting-edge that day would be commonplace within a couple of years. We talked about how high the ceiling on intelligence was, and about the dangers that AI would likely bring in areas like cybersecurity and bioweapons. We talked about how technology was fast and government was slow. Then he asked about the benefits. He cared about ending cancer as much as anything in the world, and AI — managed well — offers more hope for that than anything else. Most of all, we talked about what became the argument of the book my White House colleague @TantumSCollins and I have written: that democracies must lead in inventing this technology, turn that lead into a lasting advantage, and do it all without betraying their own values. Achieving all three at once will be a bitter struggle. Every choice pits security against liberty, speed against caution, power against principle. Today THE BITTER STRUGGLE is out from Crown, in hardcover, ebook, and audio. It’s our account of what happened, what’s coming, and what’s at stake. We don’t pretend the answers are easy — in some ways we’re more worried than when we started. But these questions are too important to be debated only behind closed doors, including the door to the Oval Office. We hope you will join the debate.

I was the first White House Special Advisor for AI. My friend Tantum Collins was Director for Technology and National Security, joining government after five years at Google DeepMind. Our jobs were to help make AI safe and ensure that democracies led the way in inventing and using it well. Today, I’m a professor at Johns Hopkins and an advisor to Anthropic and others, and Tantum is the CEO of Inherent. Long before we served in government, we thought that humanity was on track to create AI systems that outperform humans at virtually every cognitive task. This was once a fringe hypothesis. It now seems inevitable. THE BITTER STRUGGLE is our new book about what’s happened, what’s coming, and what’s at stake. From nanometer-scale chips to gigawatt data centers, we will show you why AI is so powerful, and why its progress will accelerate from here in ways that feel like science fiction. We will take you into the Oval Office with President Biden, the Situation Room with the Cabinet, and the Roosevelt Room with leading CEOs — and we will examine what has happened under President Trump. The decisions made in these rooms, and in Silicon Valley, will determine which nations gain a decisive lead in AI. Whoever wields that technology will gain a power unlike any in history. The next few years may decide the next few decades. But, most of all, together we will confront AI’s hardest questions. What is the proper relationship between the companies inventing the technology, the government, and the public? How can we make sure AI is safe and trustworthy? How do democracies win without losing our values? And how can humanity figure all of this out when we are so quickly running out of time? That question is why we wrote this book — and why we believe the answers are too important to only be debated in closed rooms, including the ones we once sat in. We are so excited to finally share our work with you. The book is available for pre-order now and out November 10th from Crown.