This piece originally appeared at Hyperdimensional.
I created Hyperdimensional nearly one year ago—on January 9, 2024. Since then, I have published here at least once per week, for a total so far of 58 posts (including this one). With a year of experience under my belt, I’d like to reflect on the work thus far and offer some thoughts about where this project might go next.
The Origins of Hyperdimensional
I created Hyperdimensional on a lark.
By the summer of 2023, I had decided that I wanted to go into AI policy as a full-time writer. The first half of 2023 was not a happy time in AI policy; doom narratives predominated, and shockingly broad assertions of state authority over the future of computing were on the table. My career in public policy had shown me the many ways in which state planning and regulation had sapped America of its ability to innovate in the physical world. I was terrified that AI would be used as a pretext for a similar extension of government power over the digital world, thereby robbing our country of its last major source of dynamism. This, I resolved, must be stopped.
Writing was a major transition for me, since my previous work at think tanks had largely concentrated on managing research teams, not conducting research and writing myself (though you cannot successfully manage a research team without understanding the research at a deep level).
I had spent a decade observing think tank scholars, seeing what worked and what didn’t. I had a good sense of what my differentiated point of view would be on AI policy topics. So I made a plan: I would write a paper about AI, political theory, and philosophy for a small political theory conference, outlining my core views. I would present it, refine it, and adapt it into something that would be useful to policymakers. I did all that in September of 2023, and this eventually became one of my first public essays about AI. So far, so good.
I continued to write op-eds, slowly building my writing portfolio in established media outlets while I worked a full-time management job at a think tank. I leveraged my network to discuss jobs with think tank executives. I had one prospective role that looked extremely promising—a dream job, especially considering that I had no formal background in policy writing. Again—so far, so good.
But then the plan fell apart. I was turned down for that job on January 8, 2024 (no hard feelings, by the way!). Frustrated, I realized that the only way to advance a career in writing about AI policy was to… write about AI policy—weekly, in a medium I alone controlled. Hyperdimensional was born less than 24 hours later.
It has been more successful than I expected. The publication began with 40 subscribers, and as I write today there are well over 3,200. But the numbers aren’t what matter most: the audience of Hyperdimensional is exceptional. Every week, readers write to me with feedback, questions, and thoughts. They never cease to impress me with their insight, and it blows my mind that people of such intellectual caliber take time out of their week to read my work. Whether you have written to me or not, I want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for reading these essays.
Please know that I will always write for you—my job is to give you my honest apprehension of what is happening in this fast-moving and chaotic world of AI. My perspective is limited, and probably wrong in at least some important ways, but I will always see it as my duty to tell you the truth as I understand it.
To that end, I think I owe my readers an honest self-reflection on my work so far. What follows will be self-critical, but I don’t mean to sound entirely negative about my work; on the contrary, I am proud of the work I’ve done here, and believe I got quite a bit of analysis right. It’s just that patting myself on the back isn’t an interesting exercise for me, or, I suspect, for you. There is much more value in identifying the interesting ways in which I erred.
Continue reading at Hyperdimensional
