Stephen Kotkin
Historian and Hoover Institution senior fellow who interviews Fei-Fei Li in the Only in America series.
Spatial Intelligence Extends AI Beyond Language Into Three-Dimensional Worlds
Fei-Fei Li argues that the next frontier in artificial intelligence is spatial intelligence: systems that can perceive and work with three-dimensional worlds, not just language and flat images. In a conversation with historian Stephen Kotkin, the Stanford computer scientist and World Labs co-founder connects that ambition to a broader question about how intelligence works—and says the development of powerful AI also demands truth-seeking, public responsibility and greater attention to teachers and families.
America Remains Dominant If It Stops Defeating Itself
Stephen Kotkin argues that the United States remains the world’s dominant power, not a late-stage empire in British-style decline, but that it risks weakening itself through overextended commitments, depleted military capacity, damaged alliances, and domestic institutional decay. In a Hoover Institution Uncommon Knowledge interview with Peter Robinson, Kotkin applies that argument to Iran, China, Ukraine, and America’s internal politics: Washington can still deter rivals and lead allies, he says, if it stops treating postwar exceptional dominance as the normal measure of American power.