Verity Harding

For more thought-provoking essays -- on civil rights and tech from a former Obama administration, on the experience of Japan from a former Japanese foreign minister, and more -- see the full collection here:

Reimagining the AI Arms Race - Bennett School of Public Policy bennettschool.cam.ac.uk

Anna Wintour taken aback by the backlash to the Bezos Met Gala sponsorship. A commencement speaker in Florida shocked by the students booing her every mention of AI. Old people do not understand what’s happening with AI and the young. Here’s what’s going on, why it’s happening…

Does AI have a 'cool' problem? verityharding.substack.com

In the words of the great @tricialockwood.bsky.social : no one is talking about this. My latest piece on the growing support for open source models and why the OpenAI hack on Hugging Face may have sped up an underlying trend most haven’t noticed yet.

Inflection Points verityharding.substack.com

Chris Nolan vs George Lucas — who is right about the future of AI in Hollywood?

Nolan vs Lucas: Hollywood's AI battle verityharding.substack.com

Chris Nolan vs George Lucas: who’s right about the future of AI in Hollywood? My latest post out now:

Verity Harding (@verityharding) substack.com

I wrote months ago about the different factions within the Trump coalition — and how AI has Read more here about how what these different AI factions care about, how they emerged, and what’s driving the current deadlock in federal AI policy in the US.

The AI battle tearing MAGA apart verityharding.substack.com

Read my last two posts to understand (some of) what’s going on here: open.substack.com/pub/verityha... open.substack.com/pub/verityha...

AI hiring is a small problem with a big signal verityharding.substack.com

Read my last two posts to understand (some of) what’s going on here: open.substack.com/pub/verityha... open.substack.com/pub/verityha...

Does AI have a 'cool' problem? verityharding.substack.com

Among Gen Z AI’s net favourability is now minus 44, driven by fears about jobs, the environment, creativity. But there’s another trend that many have missed: AI just isn’t very cool. My latest post explores the trend, the reasons behind it, and the consequences for the OpenAI/…

Does AI have a 'cool' problem? verityharding.substack.com

🚨New publication 🚨 Today my group at Cambridge, the AI & Geopolitics Project, launches our first anthology. It’s a bold new collection of essays bringing together 10 thought-leaders to challenge the dominant narrative that AI is an existential, zero-sum battle between the US and China (1/3)

An interesting dynamic in the AI jobs apocalypse discourse is how everyone thinks that their area of expertise is safe, but that areas they don’t know much about are at risk. Eg writers being able to recognise AI writing as turgid and unoriginal; SWEs seeing vibe coding as buggy and unsafe… (1/3)

The framing of AI as an “arms race” between the US and China is not just wrong, it’s dangerous. My new anthology, "Reimagining the AI Arms Race" features contributions from a range of expert leaders all interrogating the accuracy and relevance of that framing. Here’s a preview of 5 of them:

AI is now so unpopular amongst Democrat core voters that in the LA mayoral race Karen Bass clearly feels “his campaign uses AI” is an effective enough attack line—even in such a short rebuttal as this (from the @nytimes.com)

For a while it looked like a truce, but Republicans’ AI fault lines have reemerged. Last week conservative influencers including Bannon urged Trump to make pre-deployment testing of frontier models mandatory. Days later, Trump shelved an executive order on AI safety after industry lobbying (1/2)