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 Prize-winning Harvard historian and New Yorker writer argues that tech companies are gradually taking on the functions of democratic government — whether that’s Twitter giving a distorted picture of the electorate or Facebook displacing local news. In her view, these leaders often mistake technological advancement for political progress, all while outright declaring their intention to replace the nation-state.
On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Anthony Ha talks with Lepore about her book and why she thinks today's AI leaders — who promise a future where AI makes government more efficient, more responsive, and maybe even unnecessary — are selling an old fantasy in new packaging.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
Why Lepore sees a straight line from the classic 1984 Macintosh ad to Anthropic's AI constitution and Sam Altman's comments about an “AI president”
How E.M. Forster’s 1909 sci-fi story “The Machine Stops” provides a blueprint for the artificial state, and why Lepore says it now reads like “the diary of a very unhappy YouTuber”
Why Lepore believes the artificial state is ultimately unsustainable, and what she thinks it would take to rein it in
Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
0:49 Defining the “artificial state”
2:17 Why corporations quietly took over state functions
4:43 Could the internet have gone another way?
9:01 From the 1984 Macintosh ad to Anthropic's constitution
10:20 The Twitter “town hall” myth
13:36 Structuring the book: history meets science fiction
17:46 The Machine Stops, and other bad manuals for the future
19:16 Musk, Heinlein, and misreading sci-fi
19:41 Why Lepore thinks the artificial state is “doomed”
21:51 Data centers, local politics, and the death of local news
24:44 Revisiting disruptive innovation, ten years later
26:54 Outro
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Read more
