The Promise of Organized Knowledge
The Fall 2026 issue explores how artificial intelligence might affect public policy in a variety of domains. Take biosecurity: Despite the fear that AI could be used to engineer dangerous pathogens, a former FBI special agent argues that the technology can also be used to uncover suspicious activity and possible bad actors before they become a threat. On economic policy: Spectacular wealth from AI will accrue to relatively few companies and individuals. What if a country were to create an AI sovereign wealth fund to distribute these profits more equitably? A group of Canadian scholars and legislators proposes to set up just such a fund. And when it comes to trust, a cultural anthropologist argues that CERN, the world’s most successful large-scale science collaboration, has many lessons to offer European regulators about how to build trust and transparency when using AI for science.
What Are the Goals for AI?
In “Escaping AI’s Measurement Trap” (Issues, Summer 2026), Urs Gasser, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, and Fabienne Marco make a compelling case that governance of artificial intelligence faces a problem. Once benchmarks become targets, systems and their developers adapt to them, and measured performance may increasingly diverge from behavior in the real world. Their argument leads to a broader question: How can democratic societies not only improve the oversight of increasingly optimized AI systems, but shape what gets optimized in the first place?
A DISCUSSION OF
Escaping AI’s Measurement Trap
By Urs Gasser, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Fabienne Marco
Read Responses From
Biosecurity for the Age of AI
By Edward You
There is much discussion on how artificial intelligence poses threats to biosecurity; there should be at least as much focus on how AI can expand the solutions.
Today’s biosecurity approach is still grounded in a foundation laid nearly two decades ago. In 2008, when I reported to Federal Bureau of Investigation Headquarters as a newly minted supervisory special agent to support biosecurity policy, one important, emerging question was how providers of synthetic DNA should screen orders from customers. As commercial gene synthesis became increasingly accessible, many people worried that individuals could order genetic sequences coding for toxins and pathogens and then use them to cause harm.
