Panic over AI can make us forget how innovation actually works.

Comment “Innovation” and we’ll send you the full video. In a recent X thread, Jacob Coxon said he resigned from Anthropic after doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. His claim was stark: leading labs are racing toward self-improving superintelligence and taking risks that could affect everyone. But authors like Matt Ridley reminds us that nobody sees a new technology clearly at the beginning. Electricity, cars, computers, the internet, and now AI arrive through surprise, error, hype, disappointment, rivalry, and unexpected uses. We often overestimate what technology will do tomorrow and underestimate what it may do over decades. Enter economic historian Joel Mokyr. Mokyr helps explain why some societies handle this process better than others. Innovation flourishes where culture welcomes useful knowledge, experimenters are allowed to challenge old habits, and institutions protect people trying new things. The turbulence is painful, but it is also how societies escape stagnation. AI will rearrange work. It will create failures and dangers. It will also create tools, companies, jobs, and possibilities we cannot yet name. The right answer is accountability, experimentation, open markets, and humility about the future.