Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Artificial intelligence isn’t just a technology—it’s a battleground of competing values, incentives, and worldviews.
Accelerationists see AI as a force for human progress, unlocking new frontiers of innovation and economic growth. Safetyists warn that its rapid development could unleash existential risks that outpace our capacity for control. Skeptics take issue with salvation and doomsday narratives, instead grappling with how AI’s deployment amplifies existing social and economic inequalities. Too often, these camps speak past one another. Yet to chart a responsible path forward, their dialogue is essential.
This conversation brings together Jason Crawford (Roots of Progress), Amba Kak (AI Now Institute), and Brian McGrail (Center for AI Safety Action Fund) to explore the fault lines and shared assumptions among these major schools of thought, what we at the Berkman Klein Center call the AI Triad. Together, they examine where accelerationists, safetyists, and skeptics most productively disagree, and where their goals may unexpectedly align.
Moderated by BKC Faculty Director Jonathan Zittrain, this event is part of our ongoing effort to foster dialogue across divided intellectual communities and to surface the moral, technological, and empirical premises driving the AI debate.
Artificial intelligence isn’t just a technology—it’s a battleground of competing values, incentives, and worldviews.
Accelerationists see AI as a force for human progress, unlocking new frontiers of innovation and economic growth. Safetyists warn that its rapid development could unleash existential risks that outpace our capacity for control. Skeptics take issue with salvation and doomsday narratives, instead grappling with how AI’s deployment amplifies existing social and economic inequalities. Too often, these camps speak past one another. Yet to chart a responsible path forward, their dialogue is essential.
This conversation brings together Jason Crawford (Roots of Progress), Amba Kak (AI Now Institute), and Brian McGrail (Center for AI Safety Action Fund) to explore the fault lines and shared assumptions among these major schools of thought, what we at the Berkman Klein Center call the AI Triad. Together, they examine where accelerationists, safetyists, and skeptics most productively disagree, and where their goals may unexpectedly align.
Moderated by BKC Faculty Director Jonathan Zittrain, this event is part of our ongoing effort to foster dialogue across divided intellectual communities and to surface the moral, technological, and empirical premises driving the AI debate.
