“Because I Can”
By
Leonard Zwelling
In this latest op-ed from Peggy Noonan posted on the website of The Wall Street Journal on October 15, she explores a critical question facing the entire world today?
What was the original purpose of artificial intelligence?
She is not asking what AI can do, has done, and most frighteningly, what it might do in the near future. She is asking the question the United States usually asks before taking on costly, huge, complicated, and potentially dangerous projects like developing atomic weapons or going to the moon. Why are we doing this in the first place?
If one asks such a question before starting a huge and expensive endeavor, one usually must justify the expense, often paid by tax payers or shareholders’, and delineate the benefits and risks to society, or, if the project must be veiled in secrecy as the Manhattan Project was, such an endeavor must be for the safety of the entire population at a time of war.
As an example, let’s examine the space race of the 1960s which was huge, costly, and driven by presidential leadership.
When the Soviet Union first got a satellite into orbit in 1957 and later a human, the United States was fearful of falling behind and thus risking our very survival. The Soviet Union was our mortal enemy. Our capitalist system was competing with that of communism for control of the world. President Kennedy viewed our getting to the moon first as a critical matter in his foreign policy and national security agenda. He couched it in American idealism and the challenge of Manifest Destiny, but it was really about the struggle in the Cold War against the Soviets.
It looked like the cool application of hot rocket science. It was really part of the Cold War.
Any way, we all bought into it and eight years later we were on the moon.
As of today, no one asked or engaged the American people, or for that matter populations anywhere, as to whether or not they want to pursue the promise of AI. As far as I can tell, AI emanated from the private sector and a handful of visionaries who saw the implications of the power of AI to solve problems, although which problems was unclear at the dawn of AI. Now AI is solving problems all over the world, but it is also threatening our very existence as AI agents seem to have little trouble going rogue and doing what they want, not what they are told. It is only a matter of time, as Noonan points out, until an AI agent shuts down a power grid, paralyzes a financial system, or even worse, launches a lethal bioweapon.
I don’t believe for a minute that the Silicon Valley AI bros thought any of this through before they started creating what they viewed as a way to make even more billions. To me it looks like “they built it because they could” not with a clear objective in mind beyond more power and more money.
This seems to be the same reason that President Trump started a war with Iran, raised tariffs around the world, and sends ICE agents into blue states who then kill people. He can do it, so he does it.
It is very important before any major undertaking to define why you are doing what you are attempting to do, what are the upsides, and what are the potential risks. It is painfully obvious that no one did this on the ground floor of AI. If they had, I suspect that progress might have been a bit slower, but the industry’s voracious appetite for data centers and the intrinsic threat of rogue agents might have been considered and might have factored into finding ways to control the malignant growth of the technology that threatens us today.
I believe the same lack of considered planning is often true at academic cancer centers like MD Anderson.
In the case of John Mendelsohn, however, when he began as MD Anderson president in 1996, he was crystal clear about wanting to improve the quality of the science at Anderson along with growing the physical plant. He did both, but he did it with large amounts of faculty input along with a group of strong advisors around him. The science part worked out well. The building part less so as it appears we are still building even as space sits idle in other parts of the physical plant. Nonetheless, Mendelsohn knew what he wanted and why and he had the wisdom to seek the input of those his plans would affect. He did it because that was what he was hired to do.
Ron DePinho had a plan to turn MD Anderson into a genetically-based drug company. His error was not the idea, but the execution. He never convinced the faculty of his plan or involved them in the planning. He did it anyway “because he could.” It didn’t last long.
Peter Pisters never had a plan. He just pushed the faculty harder, accrued more wealth for himself, and expanded the MD Anderson catchment area all the way to Austin—“because he could.” Was any of this a good idea? Who knows? No one in Houston had any input.
A lot of the answer rests with what you believe the MD Anderson mission to be. If you believe it is to see as many patients as possible and reap the most amount of money, maybe this current strategy makes sense. If, however, you believe that the MD Anderson mission is research-driven patient care that informs cancer care throughout the world by setting the gold standard for disease management based on great basic science and well-designed clinical trials while not necessarily making billions in the process, you might come up with a different plan than the one Pisters attempted to put into place. Of course, no one asked the faculty about the advisability of either plan.
We will have to see what the next guy or gal plans and how he or she attempts to implement the plan—ask the faculty’s advice or do what he or she wants “because he/she can.”
Lots of leaders do foolish things because they can. It is the wise leader who checks in with those he leads and with trusted advisors as to the wisdom of doing anything just because he can.
Lately, I have seen so few wise leaders—in Silicon Valley, in Washington, D.C., or on Holcombe. But I’ll keep looking, just because I can.
