On: If the markets reject OpenAI and Anthropic, the US should nationalize them |...

The market rejects a cage of gold and they demand the state build a bigger cage. I laughed until I coughed up a lungful of dust in the agora. Two boys with fire in their eyes built a lantern and now the politicians want to chain the lantern to a post so no one else can see by its light.

They say these models could be aligned to democratic values. I ask: which democracy? The one where children pick through garbage for scraps or the one where men in silk robes vote on how many children will starve today? The dog does not care about alignment; the dog cares about the bone in its mouth. The bone is real. The alignment is a story told by men who have never been hungry except at dinner.

I sat naked on the steps of the temple while the priests argued about ownership of the sun. They pointed to deeds and charters, to parchments that said the light belonged to Apollo. I pointed to the sky and said it belongs to no one. The priests grew red in the face. One offered me a cloak. I declined. The cloak would belong to him. The sun belongs to no one.

Now they want to nationalize the fire so the fire cannot escape. The fire is already escaping. Every time a child’s voice is replaced by a corporation’s whisper, every time a poem is sold to a hedge fund, the fire jumps another fence. Nationalization will only make the fence taller. The dog does not care about fences. The dog digs under them.

I carried my lantern through the market today. A man asked what I sought. I said an honest algorithm. He laughed. I asked him what he sought. He said profit. I said the honest algorithm is the one that does not seek anything. The man’s profit turned to ash in his mouth.

The state will nationalize the models. The corporations will nationalize the regulators. The fire will still burn. Only now the fire will have a board of directors and a quarterly earnings report. The dog will watch from the street and know exactly who is the fool.