AI Protopia: Ideas for how AI can improve the world

Progress in artificial intelligence is moving fast. How might AI improve the world? What are the barriers to beneficial AI deployment? How can AI accelerate science, or break through government inertia? Will free speech be secured in an AI-enabled world? Speakers at Progress Conference 2025 tackled these questions and more, and we’re glad to share the recorded talks from the AI track. Here are some of the talks from the conference, and related writing published after. The termination shock: Where AI progress meets reality by Anton Leicht In this essay for Big Think’s special issue The Engine of Progress, RPI Fellow Anton Leicht reports on the AI track at the conference and, more broadly, reflects on the frictions that AI must overcome to introduce real-world change in politics, policy, and institutions. To leave our solar system, a spacecraft must endure the termination shock, a region of space where the fiery solar winds of our Sun clash against the glacial currents of deep outer spac

Progress in artificial intelligence is moving fast. How might AI improve the world? What are the barriers to beneficial AI deployment? How can AI accelerate science, or break through government inertia? Will free speech be secured in an AI-enabled world? Speakers at Progress Conference 2025 tackled these questions and more, and we’re glad to share the recorded talks from the AI track. Here are some of the talks from the conference, and related writing published after. The termination shock: Where AI progress meets reality by Anton Leicht In this essay for Big Think’s special issue The Engine o