In their iconic song “Bohemian Rhapsody”, Queen asks a question that feels increasingly relevant in our digital age: “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?” As we navigate a world where virtual reality and information overload increasingly influence our perception of reality, this question becomes more than just a catchy lyric—it’s a philosophical conundrum at the heart of our modern existence.
During a reading project I undertook to better understand the “third wave of democracy” — the remarkable and rapid rise of democracies in Latin America, Asia, Europe and Africa in the 1970s and 80s — I came to realize that this ascendency of democratic polities was not the result of some force propelling history toward its natural, final state, as some scholars have argued.
On a Monday morning in April, Sam Altman sat inside OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters, telling me about a dangerous artificial intelligence that his company had built but would never release. His employees, he later said, often lose sleep worrying about the AIs they might one day release without fully appreciating their dangers.
