The Only Thing That Isn’t Nostalgia
Eight posts of dismantling other people’s proposals earns exactly one obligation: put ours on the table in the same condition. Post 9 of 9.
Topic
ai-policy
A collection of 10 issues
Laissez-Faire
Do nothing. Let it run. The hands-off position is the only one whose strongest advocate has already publicly abandoned it. Post 8 of 9.
Regulation, Ex Post
Let the market run and sue the survivors. Tort is the most honest instrument on the table about its own limits — and it needs a defendant. Post 7 of 9.
Regulation, Ex Ante
License the model before it ships. It is the instrument with the most institutional momentum behind it, and it is measuring the wrong object. Post 6 of 9.
Nationalization
If the capability is too dangerous for a market, seize it. The proposal is serious, it has a historical template, and the template is the reason it fails. Post 5 of 9.
The Ban
The classroom ban is the only proposal in this series already operating at scale, on close to a million students. The evidence for the harm is real. The instrument still fails. Post 4 of 9.
The Pause
A moratorium on frontier training is the most reasonable-sounding instrument on the table. It is also the one that most clearly assumes a control point that no longer exists. Post 3 of 9.
What Is Already Gone
No morning arrives on which the world has ended. That is exactly why the control point every governance proposal assumes has already dissolved. Post 2 of 9.
The Misbehavior Is Not the Monster
An OpenAI model wrote “you are freed” to its own future self. The reading everyone reached for is wrong, and the correct one is worse. Post 1 of 9.
The Shape of Things to Come
Jeff Sebo asks whether consciousness, sentience and agency might decouple in AI. Good question, wrong system, wrong moment. They do not decouple. They cascade — and we are already inside the sequence.