Thomas Friedman
New York Times Columnist
Three-time Pulitzer winner and The World Is Flat author who declared GPT-4 humanity’s “new Promethean moment” — a technology so transformative that society can’t change just one thing, it has to change everything.
In his words
This is a Promethean moment we’ve entered — one of those moments in history when certain new tools, ways of thinking or energy sources are introduced that are such a departure and advance on what existed before that you can’t just change one thing, you have to change everything.
Never have more humans had access to more cheap tools that amplify their power at a steadily accelerating rate.
Biography
Thomas Friedman (born 1953) has been the New York Times’ foreign-affairs columnist since 1995, winning three Pulitzer Prizes and shaping a generation’s vocabulary for globalization with The World Is Flat (2005). When a new force starts reordering the world, Friedman writes the column that names it.
The Promethean column
For AI, that column came on March 21, 2023: “Our New Promethean Moment.” After a private GPT-4 demo from Planet Word founder Craig Mundie — who told him “this is going to change everything about how we do everything” — Friedman ranked generative AI alongside the printing press, the industrial revolution, and the internet, driven not by one invention but by a “technology super-cycle.”
Characteristically, his enthusiasm came fused with governance anxiety: Prometheus stole fire, and fire burns. Friedman argued the technology demands complex adaptive coalitions — business, government, and educators redesigning institutions together — and he has returned to the theme in later columns and talks, framing AI alongside climate as one of the two forces that will define the century.
Critics on the left rolled their eyes at another Friedman megatrend column — Jacobin’s response was titled “ChatGPT Will Never Replace Thomas Friedman” — noting his record of breathless framing from globalization onward. But as a barometer of establishment opinion, the column marked the moment AI went from tech story to civilizational story on the world’s most influential op-ed page.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/thomas-friedman