Paul Ford

What I’ve realized is that responsible A.I. governance may really come down to something resembling a First Amendment approach. Large language models, to me, are simply artifacts: objects made from the language expressed by tens of millions of people. And Anthropic, to me, is a software publisher. I do not see Claude as a living thing; I see it as a reference work prone to glitching, a surreal encyclopedia with wild side effects.

[Commentary] Over and over in the last 20 years we’ve watched low-cost or free internet communications platforms spring from the good intentions or social curiosity of tech folk. We’ve watched as these platforms expanded in power and significance, selling their influence to advertisers. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google—they grew so fast. One day they’re a lovable new way to see kid pix, next thing you know they’re reconfiguring democracy, governance, and business. This is an era of breaches and violations and stolen identities.