The pimply and ill-shapen adolescence of AI and AI policy have come to an end. The first maturity has now begun.

It is overwhelming, and it will only become more disorienting with time. As the events of the coming years unfold, I expect many people, including loved ones, will say to me and others involved in AI policy during the adolescent era, “couldn’t you have done something to stop this?” Maybe so. All I can say for myself is I did everything I felt was prudent and possible.

There is, ultimately, no plan for how to contend with the era to come. There are no guardrails on the open plains. I am heartened by the knowledge that America has always winged it.

None of the young men who would become our founding fathers had much of an idea about what should be in our Constitution in the weeks leading up to the Constitutional Convention they had called. Young America faced seemingly irreconcilable structural tensions, and they had only the faintest idea of how they would solve them. They were armed merely with principles, knowledge, wisdom, and chutzpah.

Our country was born in improvisation, and Americans are often at our best when we are improvising with little more than principles, knowledge, wisdom, and chutzpah. America has always done well by leaning into the wind, even when it blew harshly in our face. When we are at our best, we stand defiantly against the storm. And our pursuit of greater knowledge, and of our founding ideals are, in the final analysis, the only defenses we have, our sole ballasts against the gusts.