“If you introduce that “safe” AI system into an authoritarian setting, it’s not going to be safe.” — Matthew Botvinick
Matthew Botvinick works at Anthropic, where he leads the Anthropic Institute’s research on AI and the rule of law. His new book, AI and Political Freedom, focuses on AI’s risk to democracy and how we should respond to it. It’s important to note that for this Princeton University Press book, Botvinick doesn’t represent Anthropic. That said, the fact that he just happens to be a senior policy guy at Dario’s trillion dollar startup makes both Matt and his book particularly intriguing.
He obviously knows his AI stuff. He was previously senior director of research at Google DeepMind, and before that ran neural computation labs at Princeton and Penn. He has been doing what we now call deep learning since the early nineteen nineties, when it was called connectionist modelling and few imagined it would ever amount to a commercial product. Then he went back to school for a law degree. Yale, no less. So Matt is clearly an Ivy League-trained, smart logical guy. Somebody to be (mis)trusted.
His argument is that AI doesn’t invent a new threat to democracy so much as raise the stakes on the demagogue’s playbook. It’s that familiar Trump/Modi/Orbán/Bolsonaro game of splitting the people from the elites, then, once in office, rewiring the state to entrench power and muzzling anyone who objects. What AI adds, Matt worries, is populist fuel at both ends. Thus the dangerous flammability of our current politics. Job displacement manufactures exactly the insecurity demagogues feed on, and AI hands whoever wins a surveillance and censorship apparatus that no previous authoritarian could dream of. He also expects AI-driven national security crises, and notes that states of emergency are designed to expand executive power, which makes them very easy to abuse.
I pushed Matt on whether anyone should believe any of this from a senior Anthropic policy maker. He said no, and probably meant it. There is no reason, he argued, to trust anybody from Anthropic, or any newspaper either, because a marketplace of ideas doesn’t run on trust but on the strength of the argument.
Perhaps. But my bigger concern is the ethic of the all-too-logical engineer that Matt brings to politics. As I will discuss tomorrow with the Hannah Arendt scholar Roger Berkowitz, Arendt argued that politics was anything but an engineering problem with quantifiable fixes. So when Matt promises AI enabling ancient Athens “at scale” through citizen assemblies, we should be wary. Not because this will end humanity or make Anthropic employees exorbitantly rich. But because politics isn’t code, and can’t be fixed by engineers.
FIVE TAKEAWAYS
1. AI doesn’t invent a new threat to democracy, Botvinick argues — it raises the stakes on the oldest one, the demagogue’s playbook of populist appeal, entrenchment and the muzzling of dissent.
2. Job displacement is the fuel. Insecure people look to leaders to fix what they can’t fix privately, and that is the demand demagogues exist to meet.
3. The weapons are states of emergency, which are designed to expand executive power, and AI surveillance for tracking and silencing opponents.
4. Asked why anyone should trust an Anthropic employee with stock in the company, he said plainly that there is no reason to — a marketplace of ideas runs on arguments, not trust.
5. The hopeful half is ancient Athens at scale: Hélène Landemore’s citizens’ assemblies, which work at a hundred people, somehow enlarged to a republic.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Matthew Botvinick is a member of the technical staff at Anthropic, where he leads the Anthropic Institute’s research on AI and the rule of law, and a senior fellow at Yale Law School. He was previously senior director of research at Google DeepMind, and before that led neural computation laboratories at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. AI and Political Freedom: The Risk to Democracy and How to Respond is published by Princeton University Press. He speaks here in a personal capacity, not for Anthropic.
ABOUT KEEN ON AMERICA
Keen On America is a daily conversation about the ideas, books and arguments shaping the United States, hosted by Andrew Keen, author of The Internet Is Not the Answer and How to Fix the Future. New episodes every day.
CHAPTERS
00:00 — Intro
00:31 — Apocalyptic times, and a man with a front row seat
02:45 — Is American democracy in crisis?
04:35 — Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon on the same stage
13:46 — What the Anthropic Institute actually does
17:59 — Why should we trust you?
20:03 — The global democratic recession
29:07 — The patrimonial state: Orbán, Modi, Trump
36:42 — Job displacement as political fuel
38:17 — Raising the stakes: emergencies and surveillance
45:22 — Claude reads the entire US legal code
50:00 — AI safety requires democracy
52:49 — Hannah Arendt: politics is no business for engineers
56:38 — Ancient Athens at scale