AI Is the Y2K Crisis, Only This Time It’s Real
null By Peggy NoonanNov. 30, 2023 6:39 pm ETSpeaking to a Senate subcommittee on May 16, 2023, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, IBM chief privacy officer Christina Montgomery and NYU professor emeritus Gary Marcus gave suggestions for regulating the AI industry—and highlighted the associated perils. Images: AFP/Getty Images/Reuters Composite: Mark KellyRecently while sharing a meal an acquaintance said something arresting. We were speaking, as happy pessimists do, about where the 21st century went wrong. We’re almost a quarter-century into it, it’s already taken on a certain general shape and character, and I’m not sure I see much good in it beyond advances in medicine and science. He said he was working on a theory: The 21st century so far has been a reverse Y2K. By 12/31/99 the world was transfixed by a fear that all its mighty computers would go crazy as 23:59:59 clicked to 0:00:00. They wouldn’t be able to transfer over to 2000. The entire system would have a hiccup and the lights go out.
Nov. 30, 2023 6:39 pm ET
Recently while sharing a meal an acquaintance said something arresting. We were speaking, as happy pessimists do, about where the 21st century went wrong. We’re almost a quarter-century into it, it’s already taken on a certain general shape and character, and I’m not sure I see much good in it beyond advances in medicine and science. He said he was working on a theory: The 21st century so far has been a reverse Y2K.
By 12/31/99 the world was transfixed by a fear that all its mighty computers would go crazy as 23:59:59 clicked to 0:00:00. They wouldn’t be able to transfer over to 2000. The entire system would have a hiccup and the lights go out. It didn’t happen. Remedies were invented and may have saved the day.
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About this article
Peggy Noonan is an opinion columnist at the Wall Street Journal where her column, "Declarations," has run since 2000.
She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2017. A political analyst for NBC News, she is the author of nine books on American politics, history and culture, from her most recent, “The Time of Our Lives,” to her first, “What I Saw at the Revolution.” She is one of ten historians and writers who contributed essays on the American presidency for the book, “Character Above All.” Noonan was a special assistant and speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan. In 2010 she was given the Award for Media Excellence by the living recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor; the following year she was chosen as Columnist of the Year by The Week. She has been a fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, and has taught in the history department at Yale University.
Before entering the Reagan White House, Noonan was a producer and writer at CBS News in New York, and an adjunct professor of Journalism at New York University. She was born in Brooklyn, New York and grew up there, in Massapequa Park, Long Island, and in Rutherford, New Jersey. She is a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University in Rutherford. She lives in New York City. In November, 2016 she was named one of the city's Literary Lions by the New York Public Library.
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