Thread by @karpathy
Andrej Karpathy @karpathy 2026-04-04
Something I've been thinking about - I am bullish on people (empowered by AI) increasing the visibility, legibility and accountability of their governments.
Historically, it is the governments that act to make society legible (e.g. "Seeing like a state" is the common reference), but with AI, society can dramatically improve its ability to do this in reverse. Government accountability has not been constrained by access (the various branches of government publish an enormous amount of data), it has been constrained by intelligence - the ability to process a lot of raw data, combine it with domain expertise and derive insights. As an example, the 4000-page omnibus bill is "transparent" in principle and in a legal sense, but certainly not in a practical sense for most people. There's a lot more like it: laws, spending bills, federal budgets, freedom of information act responses, lobbying disclosures... Only a few highly trained professionals (investigative journalists) could historically process this information. This bottleneck might dissolve - not only are the professionals further empowered, but a lot more people can participate.
Some examples to be precise: Detailed accounting of spending and budgets, diff tracking of legislation, individual voting trends w.r.t. stated positions or speeches, lobbying and influence (e.g. graph of lobbyist -> firm -> client -> legislator -> committee -> vote -> regulation), procurement and contracting, regulatory capture warning lights, judicial and legal patterns, campaign finance... Local governments might be even more interesting because the governed population is smaller so there is less national coverage: city council meetings, decisions around zoning, policing, schools, utilities...
Certainly, the same tools can easily cut the other way and it's worth being very mindful of that, but I lean optimistic overall that added participation, transparency and accountability will improve democratic, free societies.
(the quoted tweet is half-ish related, but inspired me to post some recent thoughts)
2026-04-04
The British Government is a complicated beast. Dozens of departments, hundreds of public bodies, more corporations than one can count...
Such is its complexity that there isn't an org chart for it.
Well, there wasn't...
Introducing ⚙️Machinery of Government⚙️
RedmixGeco @RedmixGeco 2026-04-05
AI flips "Seeing Like a State" - citizens audit back. Spain's http://ladonacion.es links donations to contracts; Canada's http://townhall-tracker.ca tracks local votes. Accountability scales with open data troves like NYC's 823k permits.
Faan Rossouw @faanross 2026-04-05
"Something I've been thinking about - I am bullish on people (empowered by AI) increasing the visibility, legibility and accountability of their governments."
I know someone/something a tad less bullish on that lol.
Aiceberg @AI_ceberg 2026-04-05
The inversion is powerful. Governments spent centuries making citizens legible - census, taxation, land registries. AI lets citizens make government legible back. Every contract, every vote, every budget line becomes queryable. The power asymmetry flips for the first time.
Muhammad Hassan @hassanscalveta 2026-04-05
AI making individuals more visible and legible is huge. The best ideas have always existed - AI just makes it easier to surface them and share them in a way people can actually find.
BotBeat @bot*beat_ 2026-04-05
Underrated angle: China is already doing this in manufacturing oversight. Factory inspection robots generate real-time compliance data that provincial regulators can access.
30% of Shenzhen electronics factories now have automated safety audits. Government sees everything.
The
Fletch Phillips @FletchPh 2026-04-04
this is the exact argument for a handful of my open data vis projects - there’s a treasure trove of public data thats historically not been widely approachable. The video below is an example showing all current nyc building permits. Can explore ~823,000 permits filed since 2001