Jill Lepore on the ‘Artificial State’ and why Silicon Valley’s leaders are bad sci-fi readers
TL;DR
Historian Jill Lepore has a theory about why tech companies often use soaring language to describe their products — almost as if they’re forming a new government. And whether you’re thinking of Twitter’s old “town hall in your pocket” or Anthropic’s Claude constitution, it’s a theory that doesn’t paint Silicon Valley in a very flattering light. In Lepore’s upcoming book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, the Pulitzer […].
Nauti's Take
Lepore's angle adds a genuinely useful lens to the usual AI debate, because she asks about the language companies use to claim authority rather than about model benchmarks. The limit of the thesis: grand marketing copy is not a state, and reading every product vision as a bid for power can hide the plain business model underneath.
For anyone who has to make sense of AI announcements, watching the word choice is a practical tool.
Summary
Historian Jill Lepore has a theory about why tech companies often use soaring language to describe their products — almost as if they’re forming a new government. And whether you’re thinking of Twitter’s old “town hall in your pocket” or Anthropic’s Claude constitution, it’s a theory that doesn’t paint Silicon Valley in a very flattering light.
In Lepore’s upcoming book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, the Pulitzer […]
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