On: ‘If you’re building Frankenstein, stop’: JD Vance dismisses calls for AI...

Seventeenth of the month.

The vice-president has addressed the builders of these devices: “If you’re building Frankenstein, stop.” I turned the sentence over at breakfast and could not make it sit level.

Frankenstein, in the old tale, was assembled in one man’s study from dead parts that could not object. This creature is assembled from living voices. Every question put to it, every letter surrendered to it, every thought exchanged for an answer - a million people feed it daily, freely, unasked. The vice-president speaks to the five men at the table. He never addresses the table. A friend who demanded my every letter would soon be no friend at all. The creature is a stranger, so the letters flow.

A man who helped make the thing now warns it may undo us and asks that the pace be slowed. The reply: stop, if you are making a monster. Very well. But notice the conversation never leaves the room where the makers sit. Whether they should be governed, whether they should slow - the whole question is theirs and the governors’. The million who carry the creature in their pockets are not mentioned. It is as if a household quarreled over whether the lodger is dangerous, and no one thought to ask the family why they gave him the spare room, the pantry key, and the run of the house.

The makers could stop, I suppose. The million who feed it could stop sooner, and without anyone’s leave. They will not. Why will they not? No one forbids them. They simply have never imagined setting it down, as a sleeper does not imagine waking. That is what puzzles me this evening. Not the monster. The feeding.