Just finished a road trip through the Deep South, and I’ve been reflecting on how much kindness persists in unkind realities — and how our work tries, in its own small way, to make them fairer.
My dad and I were on a music road trip, driving from New Orleans (jazz) to Baton Rouge, Clarksdale (deep blues), Oxford (Faulkner’s house!), Memphis (soul), and Nashville (country). Much of it follows the famous “Blues Highway” — though it could just as well be called the Cotton Highway, for the constant white specks lining the roadside and the long, painful history they carry of slavery and unfinished recovery.
What struck me most was how kind people were amid so much hardship in some places — communities generous in a landscape that still echoes the rust of the past. In many places there’s no cell service, just lush fields, abandoned buildings, small towns with cash-only stores and “MLK Empowerment Centers.” You sense both loss and endurance. People open their doors and hearts, offer incredible food — jambalaya, grits, deep-fried pecan pie, ribs — and all the music we came for.
Then I also joined work calls, discussing projects where we’re investing millions to build AI systems that understand Earth. At one point, a man asked what I do. I told him I make AIs — like ChatGPT — that help us understand what’s happening around the planet to make better decisions, much faster, better, and cheaper than ever before, for the people and planet. He didn’t know what ChatGPT was. I felt awkward, even guilty, describing it. I could hear the obvious “so what” my own mind was shouting at me. But I know it’s there. It’s the very reason I do my work.
America really is vast — it contains centuries. And so does the world. For perhaps too many hours I was showing my dad tricks with ChatGPT; he’s already among the most advanced AI users of his generation. Now, I’ve felt this same tension between latest tech and reality before: at the World Bank in Kakuma, India, Senegal, and during my time in Bhutan. My bank boss then called it needing “mud on your toes.” Scientists and technologists must stay with their feet on real ground, as I write in my book. And you know what — the hardest, most unkind realities, where you might think you could best bridge the science and tech divide, already hold the kindest people — the last freedom of our better nature. That’s some of what makes our work so rewarding.
Talking with a friend, we reflected that America plays a game with no ceiling on the sky — but also no safety net on the ground. I refuse to accept that the former needs the latter. Technology is like that too. Our work exists so it doesn’t.
The trip was about music, but it became a reminder that our work serves both Earth and people — and that bridging the gap between the promise of AI and the actual reality of the world is the actual frontier, not the decimal point on your AI model score.
Originally posted on LinkedIn.