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Gideon Lichfield

@glichfield.bsky.social
2.1K followers 151 following 68 posts

Climber, biker, cocktailer, polyglot, vagabond. Ex EIC WIRED & MIT Technology Review, now writing about the future of democracy at futurepolis.substack.com. NYC/SF. He/him/Sir.

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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
...and AI that serves human flourishing. On top of the $5,000 prize itself, the two contest winners will have their stories published in the anthology, which @r-emrys.bsky.social and I are editing. More about the prize, and how to submit a story at protopianprize.com; the deadline is July 31.
protopianprize.com
The Protopian Prize | The Fiction Contest
The Protopian Prize is a fiction contest inviting you to share your vision of people working toward liberatory futures, meeting obstacles, and making real change. “Protopian”—a word coined by Kevin ...
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
If you want to have a story published alongside some of the leading names in speculative fiction, now's your chance. @mitpress.bsky.social has agreed to publish an anthology linked to the Protopian Prize, a fiction contest for hopeful future visions of democratic governance... [1/2]
protopianprize.com
The Protopian Prize | The Fiction Contest
The Protopian Prize is a fiction contest inviting you to share your vision of people working toward liberatory futures, meeting obstacles, and making real change. “Protopian”—a word coined by Kevin ...
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
I apologize! In truth I was probably responding more to a general class of arguments in the same ballpark that have left traces in my mind over time, rather than to yours specifically. Call it context loss :)
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
13/ Sure, it might have things you could call “consciousness,” “awareness,” or “experience,” but they’d be so different from ours that would it even make sense to use those words? /end
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
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 So for all these reasons, I don’t think an AI that matches our data-gathering capacity will be indistinguishable from us, however well it mimics our behavior. It’ll be more like an alien in a very effective disguise.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
11/
 Seventh: we can make copies of an AI. We can't (yet) copy humans. Imagine how differently you'd experience personhood and consciousness if you knew you could exist in multiple versions, all having different experiences, or basically cheat death indefinitely.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
10/ Could it be traumatized? I think yes; but its traumas, again, would be totally unlike ours. Perhaps it would be indifferent to physical violence (it can always be repaired) but emotionally scarred by attempts to jailbreak it?
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
9/ What would it fear? What would it desire? Could it feel something akin to shame, pride, or love? It might well have emotions we couldn’t even name, corresponding to internal states we have no equivalent of.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
8/
 I’m not saying a sufficiently complex AI couldn’t experience emotions. But if it could, its emotional landscape would, for all the reasons above, be totally alien.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
7/
 Sixth: emotions! When people make the "if it processes as much data as us, it's basically like us" argument, they're generally talking purely about cognitive capacity. This says nothing about where emotionality comes from.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
6/
 Fifth: there are poorly understood phenomena, like how our gut bacteria influence our minds or pheromones alter our perception of other humans, that are unlikely to affect an AI.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
5/
 Fourth: An embodied AI as currently conceived is Cartesian-dualist. There's a sharp divide between the "brain" and the body feeding it data. We on the other hand have several nervous systems in our bodies, storing info and handling tasks with a degree of autonomy.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
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 Third: its cognition (if we can use that word) will presumably be based on processing information through a single algorithmic system. Ours is a mess of overlapping systems accreted by evolution over millions of years, each attending to different information, often in conflict with each other.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
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 Second: as a result, it lacks our most basic urges—sex, food. It might crave other things (electricity, data, company of humans or other AIs), but those drives will shape its behavior very differently from how our primal needs shape ours.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
2/ First: embodied AI isn’t genetically programmed with the drive to survive and reproduce. Hopefully nobody would be stupid enough to give it equivalent programming (though I’m not entirely confident)
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
I often see this claim: we're just like AI, only with more data. Once AI is embodied (as Fei-Fei Li and others are working on) and can experience the world in as much detail as we do, the only way to argue it isn't conscious is to retreat into mysticism. I think this is incredibly simplistic. 🧵
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UC Berkeley Law Executive Education @ucberklawexeced.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
📣 Gideon Lichfield (@glichfield.bsky.social), Former Global Editorial Director of @wired.com, will deliver the media keynote address at the UC Berkeley Law AI Institute! He joins more than 30 AI & legal experts who share how AI is affecting law & business. 👉Register: bit.ly/463CniC
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
“Out of touch” — this from the party whose only contender for mayor has been wearing the same red beret for 45 years
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Perhaps I’ve missed it, but in all the talk about whether the attack on Iran has stopped its nuke program, I haven’t seen anyone point out that Trump played a huge role in creating the threat in the first place when he pulled out of the JCPOA
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Templeton World Charity Foundation @templetonworld.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
Can lawmaking keep up with the pace of our digital world? Journalist @glichfield.bsky.social joins host David Zvi Kalman to discuss the challenges governments face in responding to rapid technological change, and how this is mirrored in organized religion on the Belief in the Future podcast.
templetonworldcharity.org
Is Tech Too Fast to be Governed? with Gideon Lichfield (podcast)
Journalist Gideon Lichfield joins host David Zvi Kalman in this episode of Belief in the Future podcast to explore how lawmaking can keep up with the fast…
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
This is in small font at the very bottom of the #NoKings website. It needs to be in large type at the very top.
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Jameel Jaffer @jameeljaffer.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
Alternatively, “Thousands of Americans expected to take to the streets in defense of their neighbors and their democracy” www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06...
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
It's time. #NoKings futurepolis.substack.com/p/its-now-or...
futurepolis.substack.com
We need a massive show of peaceful force
Large and absolutely non-violent protests are the best way to prevent the militarization of the streets.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 23/05/2025
There's a difference between laws saying how cars should be built and laws saying how fast people can drive them. The proposed moratorium on state-level AI laws would be the equivalent of banning states from having speed limits. My latest: www.techpolicy.press/why-both-sid...
techpolicy.press
Why Both Sides Are Right—and Wrong—About A Moratorium on State AI Laws | TechPolicy.Press
Gideon Lichfield says there’s an argument for a moratorium—but a much narrower one than what Republicans propose.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
My latest for Bloomberg: Trump’s AI deals with the UAE and Saudi Arabia may be good business in the short term but bad geopolitics in the long term (gift link) www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
bloomberg.com
Offshoring AI to the Middle East Could Hand China a Win
The Gulf has the resources Trump needs to expand America’s AI prowess, but there’s no guarantee the Middle East will stay loyal to his cause.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
The story of what DOGE is doing will henceforth be all about this: not about firing people or cutting supposed waste, but making US data privacy an even greater nightmare than it already was.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
There have been a lot of good analyses recently about what the "real" purpose of DOGE is. But what did Elon Musk *think* it was? My latest, for Foreign Policy (gift link) foreignpolicy.com/2025/05/14/e...
foreignpolicy.com
Elon Musk Was Donald Trump’s Useful Idiot
It’s looking increasingly likely that the world’s richest man got played.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 13/04/2025
People who claim AGI is imminent mean a wide range of different things by it. For Bloomberg, I write that this AGI hype is obscuring our ability to talk intelligently about the big changes that are actually coming. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/feat...
bloomberg.com
When Will AI Be Smarter Than Humans? Don’t Ask
The term “artificial general intelligence” is being bandied about by some of tech’s smartest people, but nobody knows what it really means.
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Tim O’Brien @timobrien.bsky.social · 13/04/2025
The term “artificial general intelligence” is being bandied about by some of tech’s smartest people, but nobody knows what it really means. @glichfield.bsky.social has some thoughts: www.bloomberg.com/opinion/feat...
bloomberg.com
When Will AI Be Smarter Than Humans? Don’t Ask
The term “artificial general intelligence” is being bandied about by some of tech’s smartest people, but nobody knows what it really means.
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Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
Worth a read. I worked at The Economist (one of the lumbering Goliaths Seward mentions here) when it launched. Still remember the FOMO at the new thing, and how much I loved @glichfield.bsky.social's newsletters. What a terrible business, the news. But as Zach says, so many great people. RIP Quarts.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
If you're in the SF Bay Area, come to City Lights tomorrow to hear me interview Ray Nayler about his latest book, Where the Axe is Buried, a near-future science fiction novel that's also a critique of both authoritarianism and Western technocratic government. citylights.com/events/ray-n...
citylights.com
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
Truly you could not do better than Quartz for a case study of 2010s digital media. It was a microcosm of all the things. And yes, it was a great place to work, both because of the people and because of the culture of experimentation, which was like nowhere else I’ve ever worked.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
You had me for a second @garymarcus.bsky.social
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
Today I learned that (a) “greenhushing” is now a thing (b) we’re all getting measurably stupider and (c) the whole universe might be inside a black hole. Not sure how much weirder things can get
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Right now most attention is on the damage. But I don't think it's too early to start thinking about what could rise from the ashes. One day—maybe a long way off—people will realize they want a functioning government and better ways of having a say in it. futurepolis.substack.com/p/a-scenario...
futurepolis.substack.com
A scenario for American democracy 20 years from now
Let's do a little dreaming, shall we?
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
Found on the sidewalk. I can’t help thinking that putting this issue on the top was deliberate
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
"When hackers penetrate a computer system, security experts patch the vulnerability within hours. Trump has been using the same exploit for more than eight years. What’s our excuse?" In which I analyze the meaning of the Gaza plan and the media's response. futurepolis.substack.com/p/trump-is-a...
futurepolis.substack.com
Trump is a hacker, and there is a patch
A better way of making sense of him would also rob him of much of his power.
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B! 🐝 Cavello (they/them) @b-cavello.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
I really appreciate this piece from @glichfield.bsky.social on metaphors to communicate #PublicAI (or whatever you call it) to the public. Having spent much of my career focused on translating esoteric tech/policy stuff to folks, I know the value of a good metaphor! BUT I also have Some Thoughts 🧵
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
In which I wrestle with the problem of how to explain "public AI" to the public and decide that the best metaphor might be... supermarkets? futurepolis.substack.com/p/like-bridg...
futurepolis.substack.com
"So what, kinda like a bridge, but for AI"?
The conundrums of creating—and understanding—public digital infrastructure.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
Meanwhile, the media takes him literally and thus wastes considerable resources reporting out the fact this is obviously batshit crazy. Just look at all these bylines:
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
That thing about how Trump's supporters take him "seriously but not literally"? That's clearer than ever when it comes to his nutso plan for taking over Gaza:
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
nm, this may just be teething troubles. But worth keeping an eye on. www.snopes.com/fact-check/t...
snopes.com
Trump Admin Deleted Constitution from White House Site. It's Not as Ominous as His Critics Think
The Constitution did disappear from the White House website, but so did other pages. The removal may have been in error, or perhaps only temporary.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
Anyone know if incoming presidential administrations normally delete the archives on whitehouse.gov from the previous one? I ask because this EOP budget request from 2022 is no longer available. It was last saved by archive.org on January 16. web.archive.org/web/20250116...
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
Bold claim from @rbreich.bsky.social robertreich.substack.com/p/the-muskra...
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
If I’m reading this right, the headline everyone should be writing but nobody has is: “Trump Decrees That There Are No Transgender People Any More” www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
With the inauguration just days away, I took a look at something the Trump administration ought to love: a report from Jen Pahlka and Andrew Greenway via the Niskanen Center on how to make the US govt less bureaucratic, slow-moving, and generally incapable. futurepolis.substack.com/p/reforming-...
futurepolis.substack.com
Reforming government in the Trump era
A little-noticed report provides an apolitical blueprint.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
So, are just heading towards a force-based international order now? Russia takes Ukraine, US takes Greenland and Panama Canal, China takes Taiwan…?
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
I wrote some more on the way the media has covered the UnitedHealthcare CEO's murder and how it echoes the mistakes of the early coverage of Donald Trump. futurepolis.substack.com/p/murder-mag...
futurepolis.substack.com
Murder, MAGA, the mainstream, and the media
Why the press keeps doing the wrong job.
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Joshua Benton @joshuabenton.com · 11/12/2024
Today's batch of @niemanlab.org Predictions just dropped! Featuring: @aimeetwoee.bsky.social @danieltrielli.bsky.social @doristruong.bsky.social @ericnuzum.bsky.social @ethanlindsey.com @glichfield.bsky.social @joshuadarr.bsky.social (1/2) www.niemanlab.org/collection/p...
niemanlab.org
Nieman Lab's Predictions for Journalism 2025
Each year, we ask some of the smartest people in journalism and digital media what they think is coming in the next 12 months. Here’s what they had to say.
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Gideon Lichfield @glichfield.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
The media shouldn’t be reporting Thompson’s murder as a whodunnit, but rather a whatdunnit—a serious examination of the structural issues behind it. Instead we’ve been getting out the popcorn. That’s a disservice to the public, to policymakers, and to ourselves. (end)
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