In The Odyssey, Ulysses longs to hear the sirens, creatures whose song was so beautiful it drove sailors to steer their ships into rocks. But through his cunning, he finds a way not to risk his life and get to enjoy the beguiling Siren song.

Ulysses has himself tied to the mast and orders his crew to plug their ears with wax. He hears the song while the ship stays its course and everyone survives.

That ancient myth is suddenly very modern when you consider AI to be our siren song, i.e., unimaginable breakthroughs, seductive acceleration, and extraordinary rewards at the price of existential risk.

It seems like the majority of the conversations revolve around either pontificating on the grave danger of the siren's song or the unfathomable beauty of their tunes.

Instead of choosing one side of the dichotomy, what if we acknowledge the existential threat of AI, while at the same time chasing it? Thus, we can overcome the reflex of wanting to win the argument for one or the other side and instead engage in the conversation of what could bind us to the mast and safeguard the ears of our fellow travellers. How can we design and implement decisions to bind ourselves in the future?

What we need is not to silence the sirens. We need systems that let us hear them, without steering toward the rocks. We need a Ulysses Pact^[1] that helps us to choose our limits while we still can. To be both ambitious and wise. To yearn for the song and survive it!

In an age of powerful technologies, fragile governance, manifold externalities, and entangled incentive systems that might be the deepest kind of intelligence we can show.

^{^}
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_pact

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