Something peculiar is happening here.

AI labs are writing constitutions for machines while governments are fighting over whether they themselves still get to write the rules. Anthropic has Claude’s Constitution. Amanda Askell gives the thing virtues, character, and “hard constraints.” Jill Lepore, writing in The New Yorker, asks the obvious question: what does it mean when a private company starts sounding more constitution-minded than the general state-based constitutional order around it?

Meanwhile, and at the same time, the federal government wants one national AI framework and has argued that state laws are an obstacle to innovation, while California and other states keep trying to impose safety, privacy, and reporting guardrails anyway. So this is not a story about “whether governance exists.” Governance exists. It is simply fragmented, contradictory, and fighting with itself in public.

And then there is the more antagonizing part: the discourse of alignment keeps pretending that the main question is whether the model is “good.” But lurking just below that is the real question — who (what?) has authority? Who sets the red lines. Who decides what surveillance is allowed. What decides is a right answer or plan or guidance when a question is asked of a machine intelligence? Who gets to build these intelligences (whether a model or the things that wrap around them or the devices/services that rely on them) and are they in any way regulated the way we might regulate food, building, medicine, or sandwich shop for the good of the public? Who decides whether autonomous weapons are acceptable. Who decides whether a private model vendor, a procurement office, a governor, a legislature, or the Pentagon gets the last word?

Curious to discuss and engage? Join me and your peers at General Seminar S07/E04 to explore these questions and the institutional stakes of AI governance in a hands-on, legible, and generative way.

Read more about General Seminar or get your ticket now — seats are limited so we can have a meaningful and evocative discussion.

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