Take Off

Some career news

Over the past weekend, I finalized my essay “A Framework for the Private Governance of Artificial Intelligence.” In many ways, it also retraces some of my intellectual journey over the last year.

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I am pleased to announce that as of this week, I have taken on the role of Senior Policy Advisor for AI and Emerging Technology at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

It is an honor and a thrill to have been asked to serve my country. Nonetheless, this is bittersweet news to deliver. This role means that I cannot continue to regularly publish Hyperdimensional. I will miss doing so. Over the past 16 months, I have published 75 essays here (not including today’s post), easily spanning the length of a novel. This newsletter’s audience has grown to more than 7,500 exceptionally talented and accomplished people spanning a wide range of countries and fields.

I am perpetually amazed that such a fantastic group of people takes the time to read my writing. Writing Hyperdimensional has been the most fun I’ve ever had in a job. Thank you all for letting me do it.

Hyperdimensional will no longer be a weekly publication. The publication will remain active, however, because I intend write again when I return to the private sector. So I encourage you to remain subscribed; I promise that I will not bother you with extraneous emails, ads, cross-postings, or anything other than original writing by me. I also plan to keep the archive of my past posts active. Please note, though, that all views expressed in past writing, here or elsewhere (including the private governance essay linked at the top of this post), are exclusively my own, and do not necessarily represent or telegraph Trump Administration policy.

A logistical note: all paid subscriptions to this newsletter will not renew. At what would have been the next renewal date, they will simply terminate. It will also no longer be possible to sign up for new paid subscriptions. If you would like a refund sooner, please request one, and I’ll honor it.

It is time now to go from thought to execution, from the Ivory Tower to messy reality. It won’t be easy. But I will be motivated always by the profound promise I believe AI and other emerging technologies of our era hold—by the wonderful things we can build, together, for ourselves and for our children. I will approach my new work with alacrity, vigor, and an abiding love for the United States of America.

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“In political activity . . . men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and enemy, and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behaviour in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion.”
Michael Oakeshott, “Rationalism in Politics”

The quote above is from one of my favorite essays. It is also the inspiration for the title of my essay “Neither Harbour nor Floor,” which was the first writing about AI I ever did for a public audience. I wrote that essay in the summer of 2023, and presented it at a conference of the Michael Oakeshott Association September of that year. It has been a wild ride since then—or as Oakeshott put it in another essay, “an unrehearsed intellectual adventure.”

I look forward to the adventures to come. Thank you all once again for everything.

-Dean