We need a new Bell Labs

Hero image: Bell Laboratories at 463 West Street by Charlesbahr, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Bell Labs sounds like it shouldn’t have existed. It was born out of a regulated monopoly. I’ll spare you the history lesson, but suffice it to say, here are some of the things that came out of Bell Labs: “[…] the development of radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, the photovoltaic cell, the charge-coupled device (CCD), information theory, the Unix operating system, and the programming languages B, C, C++, S, SNOBOL, AWK, AMPL, and others […]” and lots more lasers. Oh, and work completed there has resulted in at least 11 Nobel Prizes, 5 Turing Awards, and Emmys, a Grammy, and an Academy Award. Oh, and a partridge in a pear tree.

The current geo-economic and -political climate seems unlikely to produce its like again any time soon, but we need one. I should note, Bell Labs, now Nokia Bell Labs, still exists, and they’re still doing research. (No shade to folks there who I’m sure are doing great work. I just think we can do more.)

Some folks have called for an AI Manhattan Project. That’s too small and the wrong framing. It’s the wrong framing because it predisposes us to the comparisons to nuclear weapons. I will be amongst the first to admit to the dangers AI poses, eg a recent event involving OpenAI. AI can be dangerous, but that’s not all they are. They’re not just weapons. That brings us to the bit about being too small. It’s not just AI. Hell, it’s not even just what we can do with AI. There’s just so much we can still do and achieve given the opportunity.

So, that’s why I say we need a new Bell Labs. We don’t need more nuclear weapons. We need the next astronomical breakthrough, the next battery technology, and the next Unix. Get a bunch of the smartest people you can together, and give them long horizons and big budgets. Sign me up for that.