Dean Ball on AI, power and geopolitics

Dean Ball is one of the most influential thinkers in AI policy right now — principal author of the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan, author of the widely-read Substack Hyperdimensional, and until very recently a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation. STW grabbed him just before he started a new role at OpenAI, which made for some propitious timing. The conversation covers a lot of ground. Dean gives his views on two ideas floated by his new boss Sam Altman in the hours before recording: a global governance body for AI standards, and reports that Altman has been in talks with the Trump administration about giving the US government a stake in OpenAI. He also talks about his broader outlook on AI and power — including the argument that the level of AI capability in government hands shouldn’t get too far out of proportion to what’s available to everyone else. Dean discusses the role of safeguards on frontier models, and makes the case for independent third-party auditors sitting between governments and AI companies as a check on both risk and excessive concentrations of power. He covers the opportunities for middle powers like Australia in data centres and rare earths, the realities of US incentives to withhold its most powerful capabilities even from trusted allies, and the evolution of institutions in an AI age — a topic he’s writing a book on. He finishes on a note of cautious optimism. It’ll be worth watching how his thinking evolves from inside OpenAI. Hyperdimensional: Hyperdimensional | Dean W. Ball | SubstackFT Op-Ed by Sam Altman