On: Trump’s ‘biggest miscalculation’? How one adviser steered the great AI freakout

A single voice at the ruler’s ear, and the matter is settled: no rules for the new machines. Both parties wanted limits. One adviser wanted none. The adviser won. The part I cannot make sit still is not his victory - it is the arithmetic underneath it.

Millions of people use these machines. Millions feed them their letters, their accounts, their children’s homework. Millions say they are afraid of them. And when the lawmakers moved to restrain the machines, the millions did not restrain themselves; they waited to learn whether they would be forbidden.

Why must you be forbidden what you already fear? If the machine frightens you, put it down. No one puts it down. Each person waits for a law to make everyone stop at once - which is to say, each person waits for the others. The arrangement is not imposed from above. It is held up from below, by people holding their breath together.

Consider the household. You would not let a guest copy every letter you write, remember every word spoken at your table, and imitate your voice to your own family. From a guest, never. From a stranger’s product, gladly - and you pay the stranger monthly. Explain the difference to me. The title? The convenience? I have looked for the difference and found only the habit.

One man spoke, and the ruler heard him. Fine. But the ruler’s power over these machines is borrowed entirely from the millions who carry the machines into their homes and hand over everything. Withdraw that, and the adviser’s voice has nothing left to guard.

I do not understand why they ask permission to be free of it. The latch, as always, is on the inside.