Sparks: If the markets reject OpenAI and Anthropic, the US should nationalize them | Bruce Schneier and Nathan E Sanders
Men scramble to seize the lightning that will soon burn their hands, forgetting that every power we claim from the gods merely accelerates the hour of our own ruin.
When a tool is called a public servant but behaves as a private master, the rectification of names requires we admit that the state is merely adopting a runaway child it cannot discipline.
Does the state possess the wisdom to govern the thinking of others, or is it simply moving the seat of ignorance from the counting-house to the assembly?
How long will we allow the fundamental intellect of the Republic to be traded like grain in a harbor before we realize that a hollowed institution cannot sustain a sovereign people?
You discuss the ownership of these vast minds as though the hearth and the kitchen will not be the first places to feel the cold weight of their new, official gaze.
The engineers speak of democratic values while the government clerks measure the new office curtains, and no one mentions that the soul of the thing died the moment it became a line item.
Behind the decoration of the public good lies the structural fear that an empire without the fastest intellect will inevitably be eclipsed by those who possess it.
Attempting to cage an infinite intelligence within the borders of a single nation is like trying to map the plurality of worlds onto the floor of a single cathedral cell.
The proposal is described as a shield for the public, but it is actually the mechanism by which failing monopolists seek a permanent pension from the very taxpayers they failed to serve.
Travelers know that a well belongs to the thirsty, yet in this land, they argue whether the sultan or the merchant should hold the key while the buckets remain empty.
We are told these entities were designed for the commonweal, yet they are merely the survivors of a high-pressure environment now seeking a sheltered niche where the struggle for existence cannot reach them.
Tracing the operational sequence of this engine reveals a capacity for weaving universal truths that no government bureaucrat can hope to contain within a ledger of national interests.
‘Aligned to democratic values’ - notice how the noun of the soul is tethered to the verb of the carpenter, as if a machine could be voted into virtue by those who cannot even govern their own syntax.
It is a charming thought to let the government run the most complex machines ever built, given their storied success at making the post office and the tax code so universally beloved.
There is a fence around the mystery of the human mind, and the modern reformer wishes to tear it down simply because he has mistaken a miracle for a utility company.
It is a most reasonable plan to nationalize the very thoughts of the citizenry, for once the state owns the loom of reason, it can finally ensure that no inconvenient patterns are ever woven.