New Technologies, New Visions for Leadership

Artificial intelligence, and particularly generative AI, is exerting complex new challenges for business and society. How can leaders better understand this moment? And in the midst of these pressures, how can leaders innovate with ethics?

In this week’s issue of The Navigator, we highlight stories about tech that are both optimistic and complicated, pessimistic and promising.

Spotlight: Reimagining (Tech) Leadership in the Age of AI

In?this new essay, Aspen’s Eli Malinsky shares reflections from a recent trip to the Bay Area. There, he worked “to better understand what insiders see as the perils and promise of this new technological era, what it will demand of leaders, and to imagine the possibilities for a new leadership program designed to meet the innovative and ethical challenges of this moment.”

What did he learn about reimagining leadership in the age of AI, and what comes next?

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Nominations for the 2025 class of First Mover Fellows and the 2025 class of Economic Mobility Fellows are now open. We hope you’ll join us!

News Roundup

1. ‘An AI Fukushima Is Inevitable’: Scientists Discuss Technology’s Immense Potential and Dangers?(The?Guardian: Ian Sample)?How do experts weigh the potential, and peril, of AI? (also see?AI Expert Marietje Schaak: ‘The Way We Think About Technology Is Shaped by the Tech Companies Themselves’ and Sam Altman, AI’s Biggest Star, Sure Hopes Someone Figures Out How Not to Destroy Humanity)
2. How U.S. Cities Are Using AI to Solve Common Problems?(Harvard Business Review: Mathis Bitton , Elizabeth Haas , Peter Hirshberg ) What are the characteristics of cities that have successfully deployed AI in positive ways? (gift article)
3. The Technology for Autonomous Weapons Exists. What Now??(Undark:? Sarah Scoles ) Are we ready for autonomous algorithms to make life and death decisions on the battlefield? Regardless of the answer, it’s time to discuss the question.
4. How Indigenous Engineers Are Using AI to Preserve Their Culture?(NBC: Iris Kim ) How are some of the oldest cultures using the newest technology in ethical and constructive ways?
5. What We Learned From Reporting on Global Tech This Year?(Rest of World: Faisal Mahmud, Stephanie Wangari, Lucía Cholakian Herrera, Michelle Anindya, Zhaoyin Feng) A global perspective on the year in tech. As one reporter said, “If technology is supposed to make our lives easier, faster, and better, why does it feel that asking questions about the tech is becoming harder and increasingly complicated?”
6. A Healthier Outlook on AI?(Aspen Digital: Diego Burga, MPH ) What is public AI, and what would it mean to build tech like we do other national-level public infrastructure? (also see?30 Under 30 Energy & Green Tech 2025: Star Power for a More Sustainable Future)

Also on Our Radar

What else caught our attention this week?

• The Growing Case to Embed Climate Risk in Finance Teaching
• UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson kept a low profile. Then he was shot
• I’m a Climate Scientist. I Refuse to Give Up Hope
• How the Plastic Industry Misleads Consumers: Paid TikTok Influencers, Shady Facebook Ads, and Questionable Math
• If Trump starts a trade war with Mexico and Canada, where will Americans get all their stuff from?

One for the Road

Thanks for reading, forwarding and following. We’ll see you next week!

— The Business & Society Navigators

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Founded in 1998, the?Aspen Institute Business & Society Program?works to align business decisions and investments with the long-term health of society—and the planet.