America’s artificial intelligence policy debate has moved quickly over the past year, but one fundamental question remains unresolved: will the United States have a national framework for AI, or will national policy increasingly be written state by state? Congress should make answering that question one of its top priorities when it returns this fall. The case for federal leadership has only grown stronger. AI is no longer an emerging technology used by a relatively small group of companies and researchers.

Some of the concerns from communities about the adverse impact of data centers on their communities are valid and need to be addressed by local leaders. Other concerns about data centers are proxies for larger debates about the role of artificial intelligence (AI), as well as retrospective and prospective battles about the place of technology in our daily lives. Regardless, AI is thankfully here to stay, and data centers are needed to power this empowering technology.

Michael Marinaccio’s recent essay in The Hedgehog Review, “Plato’s Warning Has Been Vindicated,” is a serious and thoughtful contribution to the debate over artificial intelligence. Marinaccio deserves credit for engaging the subject in a sober, philosophically informed way rather than treating AI as either a technological messiah or an existential monster. We need more analysis like this. Artificial intelligence is developing quickly enough, and touching enough parts of human life, that questions about knowledge, memory, language, judgment, and human flourishing deserve much more attention than they usually receive.