It was mid-March 2020, and none of us knew what to expect. All around the world, people were starting to get sick and even die from the “novel coronavirus.” Broadway had shut down. So had the NBA. Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson turned up positive on the set of a movie in Australia. From my window, I could see a cruise ship camped offshore, denied the ability to dock, as its passengers were sick, or possibly sick, and either way we did not want them. The memory I will hold forever in my mind’s eye is a line of cars in a desperate queue, waiting to get into Target. Hoping everything would not be gone from its shelves. Hoping it wasn’t too late. That March, everything was happening quickly, but it hadn’t quite happened yet. We knew the world was about to change, but we did not know how. We lacked the tools to effectively measure what was going on all around us. Those early days of uncertainty remind me a lot of where we are now with AI. The technology is clearly here, spreading everywhere, and it is not going away. But what will it do? What effect will it have on our society? Will it make life better, or worse? How will we know? What’s the plan? Who should I even believe about the various ways possible futures may pan out? We’re all sitting uncomfortably with AI right now. It’s coming from the top down. The CEOs of the big AI companies caution us that this technology may very well take all of our jobs. Or that if it doesn’t live up to that hype, it might just crash the economy instead.