The Builders

Walter Isaacson × Peter Thiel

Thiel expects AI to lift productivity and lower inflation, but sees weak evidence that suppliers can sustain monopoly profits as leadership shifts from DeepMind to OpenAI and perhaps Anthropic.Even a better median outcome could bring wage gains of 3% with “plus or minus 10% or something like that,” while Thiel opposes pausing development amid China competition.He warns that AI catastrophe fears could empower a “softly totalitarian one-world government,” leaving oversight and the path to progress unresolved.