Dean Ball

Stoplights didn't invent themselves.

Someone had to go and come up with the idea and wire them in and, you know, like pass the laws that you have to follow traffic laws, all that stuff, right?

Like that took a lot of effort and, you know, it didn't just happen.

And it also wasn't entirely just the private sector that did that.

So, yeah.

this notion that, you know, macro inventions have these profound public sort of civic implications and, and, and therefore, uh, you know, the whole of society has to respond.

I think that was what AI is normal technology is about it.

In that sense, I concur with AI as a normal technology.

I do not, however, concur with the meme of, you know, this is like a new form of the relational database, or this is like a new app store, uh,

Like, no.

And the thing is, is that I think when you're actually in the trenches, I think it's very easy to say that when you're trying to justify various policy outcomes.

But I also think that, like, when you're in the trenches and you're the one, like, especially in the military context, the DOD is not behaving as though this is a normal technology.

right?

Or Department of War is not right now.

They might, well, they might say that, right?

Rhetorically, they might say, yeah, you know, we don't believe in AGI or whatever.

But like, what they're, part of the claim that they're making, and this is something that, you know, your co-author Ezra Klein has pointed out to me, is that like, so I'm actually taking a point from him here, but like,

one of the claims being made is the reason we need to do this, like supply chain risk designation that is existential for the company is because this, one of the reasons it's like this incident might cause the model, uh, you know, Claude to like sort of get its backup against the DOD and sort of like not like the DOD.

Right.

Uh, and it might, it might sabotage us.