The magazine you are holding is, in many ways, a disruptive technology. From the introduction of the printing press to the launch of the internet, human inventions have always altered how humans live, often resulting in profound cultural shifts. And while these disruptions often improved human life, each new development also carried the risk of undesirable effects far more consequential than their benefits. Society is once again at a pivotal moment, when two distinct but connected forces stemming from today’s technological advances—misinformation and artificial intelligence—are shaping its digital and even analog landscapes.

The rollout of generative artificial intelligence into the public arena has introduced new challenges to those checks and balances—AI-generated imagery and text are now unavoidable online and include new kinds of misinformation that are easier to distribute at scale than ever. And the fingerprint of AI is not just confined to digital spaces. Companies are using AI apps to automate tasks, and AI assistants and agents are increasingly present in people’s personal lives, from planning meals to writing college essays.  “No one is certain how AI might ultimately influence the world,” Bulletin editorial fellow Abi Olvera writes in a call for more diversified research into AI’s risks and benefits. Some argue that AI will soon be capable of human-level cognition; others posit that the current capabilities of AI can’t be scaled to achieve such a feat, and that the hype distracts from the technology’s very real and immediate harms. Surveying the risks ahead both from AI and how experts and institutions react to it, the University of Cambridge’s Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh urges everyone to stay alert. There is “nowhere near a consensus view on what the next decade of AI holds,” he writes, and “this lack of agreement represents a radical uncertainty overlaid on our global future.”

— Sara Goudarzi, Disruptive Technologies Editor