Jill Lepore on the ‘Artificial State’ and why Silicon Valley’s leaders are bad sci-fi readers

TechCrunch AIAugust 7, 2026en

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 […]

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• Anthropic