I recently spent several days reading a paper titled Shaping AI’s Impact on Billions of Lives. The authors include a former California Supreme Court justice, the president of a major university, and several prominent computer scientists. These individuals possess a high degree of influence in the technology sector. They state that the development of artificial intelligence has reached a point where its effects on society are unavoidable.

Giving Back

The “thousand moonshots” proposed here, from “Worldwide Tutors” to “Disinformation Detective Agencies”, suggest a future where technology is a partner, not a master. But I believe the most radical idea in this document is not the AI itself, but how it should be funded. The authors argue that “money for these efforts should come from the philanthropy of the technologists who have prospered in the computer industry”. They propose a “Laude Institute” where those who have “benefited financially from computer science research” pay for the safeguards. It is a technological tithe, a way for the architects of our new world to buy a bit of insurance for the rest of us.

In the end, I consider this a poignant attempt to keep the “human in the decision path”. We are not being replaced by a cold logic; we are being invited to outsource our mechanical drudgery so we can return to the creative, messy, and deeply empathetic work that no algorithm can ever truly replicate. The thousand moonshots are not just about reaching new frontiers in science or medicine; they are about reclaiming the time and the focus we lost to the paperwork of our own making.