In responding to the rise of artificial intelligence, Washington has turned to its usual playbook, with the White House hosting tech CEOs as lawmakers float a variety of proposals on Capitol Hill.

But the speed at which AI is developing, and the dire warnings from many of those who understand the technology best, are, to put it mildly, unusual.

That’s why one think tanker immersed in the technology believes the federal response needs to include a super-charged research project that will force tech companies to coordinate their efforts, create cordoned-off environments to test risky advances and pour resources into studying how these large language models actually work.

In other words, a Manhattan Project for AI safety, as Samuel Hammond put it in an opinion essay published this afternoon in POLITICO Magazine.

Such an initiative, he argues, could forestall the risks of AI while giving regulators and technologists a chance to understand its inner workings well enough to make sure it does not bring about catastrophe.

Hammond is a senior economist at the Foundation for American Innovation, the new name for what until recently had been the Lincoln Network, a tech-focused think tank with a libertarian bent.

In recent months, he has been wrestling with the societal implications of AI’s rapid rise. In December, Hammond published an edition of his newsletter, Second Best, presciently titled “Before the Flood,” predicting the technology would strain many existing governance structures. It’s worth the click just to be reminded of the old days of five months ago, when the outputs of AI image generators still had a rough, dreamlike quality.