Agents and Agency: Artificial Intelligence and the Electricity War for Human Freedom

Speaker:  Sarah Hunt, Founder and President of the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy

In this urgent examination of 21st-century geopolitics, Sarah E. Hunt explores the critical distinction between artificial intelligence agents—systems vulnerable to optimization without moral understanding—and human agency, our capacity for self-determination and moral reasoning. The Chinese Communist Party’s massive energy infrastructure advantage, adding ten times more electrical capacity than America in 2024, threatens to determine global AI leadership and whether authoritarian or democratic values shape human-AI interaction. Hunt will argue that America must build energy abundance through a conservative approach to light-touch industrial policy mobilization akin to WWII or the Cold War to preserve Western civilization’s commitment to individual freedom, constitutional governance, and human flourishing in the age of artificial intelligence.

Date

September 25, 2025    

Time

4:15 pm – 5:15 pm

Location

1163 Mechanical Engineering
1513 University Avenue, Madison