Inside the Biggest Feud in Artificial Intelligence

Being in San Francisco in the mid-2020s sometimes feels like what I imagine living in Los Alamos was like in 1943, when the Manhattan Project rolled into town. The air is heavy with excitement and dread. Engineers toil, day and night, on systems of profound consequence. Wild-eyed prophets sell visions of a transformed world, and politicians drop in to check on the progress of the project. ­Everyone knows that the fates of nations, and trillions of dollars of capital, rely on what happens here, yet no one can fully appreciate what it would mean if the project succeeds. One person consumed by th