Edge City

Edge City convenes people working at the frontiers of tech, science, and society in popup villages across the globe. Apply to our upcoming popup village: https://www.edgeesmeralda.com/ 

heard from Anthropic's newest hire to lead Claude for state and local government at @edgecity's demo day (one of my fav rituals) last Friday.

ex-founder, ran for office, engaged deeply with citizens and policymakers so has great real-world experience to focus on responsible AI solutions for:

1. digital democracy (eg civic engagement like pol.is)

2. better laws (removing redundancies and unnecessary red tape)

3. state capacity (eg enhance customer service at DMV or tax agencies)

4. citizen services (eg bilingual chatbots to access health services)

hard for me to not see all of these at net positive developments, but forced myself to consider potential counter arguments to each of the above (plus concerns around data privacy, biased values):

1. better participation =/= better representation

2. redundancy can be subjective

3. job replacement (although they were intentional about "enhancement")

4. better access =/= more trust

regardless, i'm feeling encouraged by Anthropic's position to use AI as a force multiplier (and not a panacea or silver bullet) to improve politics + policy in America. we are in a much better place than the "tech alone will fix this" mindset.

building farcaster | surfing @ venice, ca | eating @ gjusta / gjelina | “lucky me, lucky mud” 🤠

Sounds super cool, thanks for sharing. 

(And great points)