Historian Jill Lepore has a theory about why tech companies so often use high-priced words to describe their products, as if they were establishing a new government. And whether you’re thinking of Twitter’s old “city hall in your pocket” or Anthropic’s Claude Constitution, it’s not a theory that paints Silicon Valley in a very flattering light.
In his recent book, “The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State,” Mr. Report, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard historian and New Yorker author, argues that technology companies are gradually taking over the functions of democratic government, from Twitter giving voters a distorted picture to Facebook replacing local news. In her view, these leaders often mistake technological advances for political advances while professing intentions to replace the nation-state.
In this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Anthony Ha talks to Lepore about his book and why he thinks today’s AI leaders, who promise a future where AI makes government more efficient, responsive, and perhaps unnecessary, are selling an old fantasy in a new package.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about what’s next.
Why Lepore thinks there’s a straight line from Macintosh’s classic 1984 ad to Anthropic’s AI Constitution and Sam Altman’s comments about the “AI President” How E.M. Forster’s 1909 science fiction novel The Machine Stops offers a blueprint for an artificial nation, and why Lepore says it now looks like “the diary of a very unhappy YouTuber” Why Lepore believes artificial states are ultimately unsustainable and why she thinks they need to be reined in
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