Kevin Frazier will join the Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University as an Assistant Professor starting this Fall. He currently is a clerk on the Montana Supreme Court.
Bad weather rarely causes a plane to crash — but the low probability of such a crash isn’t because nature lacks the power to send a plane woefully off course. In fact, as recently as 2009, a thunderstorm caused a crash resulting in 228 deaths.
Instead, two main factors explain why bad weather no longer poses an imminent threat to your longevity: first, we’ve improved our ability to detect storms. And, second and most importantly, we’ve acknowledged that the risks of flying through such storms isn’t worth it. The upshot is that when you don’t know where you’re going and if your plane can get you there, you should either stop or, if possible, postpone the trip until the path is in sight and the plane is flight worthy.
The leaders of AI look a lot like pilots flying through a thunderstorm — they can’t see where they’re headed and they’re unsure of the adequacy of their planes. Before a crash, we need to steer AI development out of the storm and onto a course where everyone, including the general public, can safely and clearly track its progress.
Despite everyone from Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, to Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of the UK, acknowledging the existential risksposed by AI, some AI optimists are ignoring the warning lights and pushing for continued development. Take Reid Hoffman for example. Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, has been "engaged in an aggressive thought-leadership regimen to extol the virtues of A.I” in recent months in an attempt to push back against those raising redflags, according to The New York Times.
Hoffman and others are engaging in AI both-side-ism, arguing that though AI development may cause some harm, it will also create societally beneficial outcomes.The problem is that such an approach doesn’t weigh the magnitude of those goods and evils. And, according to individuals as tech savvy as Prime Minister Sunak, those evils may be quite severe. In other words, the good and bad of AI is not an apples-to-apples comparison -- it’s more akin to an apples to obliterated oranges situation (the latter referring to the catastrophic outcomes AI may lead to).
No one doubts that AI development in “clear skies” could bring about tremendous good.For instance, it’s delightful to think of a world in which AI replaces dangerous jobs and generates sufficient wealth to fund a universal basic income.The reality is that storm clouds have already gathered.The path to any sort of AI utopia is not only unclear but, more likely, unavailable.
Rather than keep AI development in the air during such conditions, we need to issue a sort of ground stop and test how well different AI tools can navigate the chaotic political, cultural, and economic conditions that define the modern era. This isn’t a call for a moratorium on AI development -- that’s already been called for (and ignored). Rather, it’s a call for test flights.
“Model evaluation” is the AI equivalent of such test flights. The good news is researchers such as Toby Shevlane and others have outlined specific ways for AI developers to use such evaluations to identify dangerous capabilities and measure the probability of AI tools to cause harm in application. Shevlane calls on AI developers to run these "test flights", to share their results with external researchers, and to have those results reviewed by an independent, external auditor to assess the safety of deploying an AI tool.
Test flights allow a handful of risk-loving people to try potentially dangerous technology in a controlled setting. Consider that back in 2010 one of Boeing's test flights of its 787 Dreamliner resulted in an onboard fire. Only after detecting and fixing such glitches did the plane become available for commercial use.
There’s a reason we only get on planes that have been tested and that have a fixed destination. We need to mandate test flights for AI development. We also need to determine where we expect AI to take us as a society. AI leaders may claim that it's on Congress to require such testing and planning, but the reality is that those leaders could and should self-impose such requirements.
The Wright Brothers did not force members of the public to test their planes — nor should AI developers.
Avoiding disaster by mandating AI testing
Getty Images
By Kevin FrazierJun 12, 2023
Kevin Frazier
Kevin Frazier is a contributor for The Fulcrum, a nonpartisan publication dedicated to strengthening democracy by fostering informed civic engagement and elevating diverse perspectives.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.