Policy Brief
We face a fundamental question: is the very pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) the kind of aim democracies should allow?
By:
Seth Lazar
If we are a long way short of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), why worry about it now?
Seth Lazar and Alex Pascal argue that the people building the most advanced AI systems are explicitly and aggressively working to bring AGI about, and they think they’ll get there in two to five years. Even some of the most publicly skeptical AI researchers don’t rule out AGI within this decade. If we, the affected public, do not actively shape this agenda now, we may miss the chance to do so at all. We face a fundamental question: is the very pursuit of AGI the kind of aim democracies should allow?
Commentary
Allen Lab Policy Fellow Hillary Lehr provides a late-October 2026 snapshot of the multiple ways that AI and the midterms are intersecting, including campaign use cases, policy issues, and voters’ use of LLMs.
Additional Resource
Commentary
Engaged California is the nation’s first state-run deliberation program, and a new law aims to make it last.
Commentary
Allen Lab Policy Fellow Hillary Lehr provides a late-October 2026 snapshot of the multiple ways that AI and the midterms are intersecting, including campaign use cases, policy issues, and voters’ use of LLMs.
Commentary
Engaged California is the nation’s first state-run deliberation program, and a new law aims to make it last.
Additional Resource
In a recent guest essay for The New York Times, Allen Lab Democracy Stack Fellow Beth Noveck argues for putting A.I. behind every public servant.