The frontier tech prisoners dilemma

As an adjunct to the Innovator’s dilemma, I keep thinking about the new technology prisoners dilemma that is currently playing out right in front of our eyes: incumbents implicitly cooperate to keep a powerful and potentially disruptive new tech in the lab for various reasons. But once one of the participant "defects" and unleashes the tech, the others are forced to change strategies and defect as well.

Obviously I am referring to AI here, but some other examples include: smartphones/mobile apps pre-iPhone, Xerox PARC GUI, open source software, publishing news for free on the Internet, Napster/music streaming, selling computers to consumers, etc.

The act of “defection” is seen as controversial at the time because while many would agree the new technology is interesting, others (including market participants) argue it would be bad/dangerous if made widely available for various reasons. "This isn't a new thing and we think it’s dumb that this defector is getting so much hype" they say, "we have been working on this forever. We just don't think it's ready."

And it certainly can be true that (most?) new technologies aren’t ready! There are innumerable historical examples of half-baked hype cycles, and the critics at the time were proven correct. But despite what any of us think about any particular technology, a participant in the game who “defects” in order to bring something controversial to the market will be the vector by which powerful new technologies are introduced to the world. If we all had to wait until there was full consensus a new technology was “ready” we would be waiting a very very long time.