Walter Isaacson says tech rivalries are not new and AI should be taught the reasons behind moral rules

Writer and biographer Walter Isaacson said the rivalry between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs was greater than the contest between Sam Altman and Dario Amodei. Discussing today's fight for computing power, he drew a parallel with the era of Carnegie and Rockefeller, when electricity, railways, telegraphs and telephones were developing. Isaacson said competition is beneficial and advocated antitrust measures: in his view, too much cooperation among large companies can keep newcomers out. He also described Nvidia's relationships with companies that buy its chips while trying to replace them with their own solutions as an example of complicated rivalry and cooperation.

Isaacson also described his interest in how to teach AI moral principles. Using Claude as an example, he asked not only what rules a model should be given, but how to explain why it should not lie or kill. He said he was interested in philosophers working on alignment and had recently discussed the subject with people at Anthropic and in San Francisco. Isaacson stressed that he had not yet decided whether this would become a book, or what such a book would be. Separately, he said he was about to publish a book about Marie Curie.