I have been following your work since I heard you on CHT back in early COVID. You are a luminary of the first order, and somehow make the path forward — with all of its technical complexity —light up with the embodied sense of future and return. You widen the lens of what is possible with a fierce devotion to what is most human.
Audrey, thank you so much for this. We need good, clear voices that have thought long and hard about where AI is taking us. The four freedoms and the Kami concepts are very easy to understand and easy to place inside other contexts. Please keep writing and adding to this space.
The “good enough ancestor” language is the line I’ll carry with me. A perfect ancestor locks the future into its own shape; a good enough one leaves a repair path. In a moment when so many AI systems are drifting toward centralization and inevitability, this essay reminds us that the most important freedom is the freedom to correct — and to keep the patch path open for the next generation. That feels like civic care in its most practical form.
I have been following your work since I heard you on CHT back in early COVID. You are a luminary of the first order, and somehow make the path forward — with all of its technical complexity —light up with the embodied sense of future and return. You widen the lens of what is possible with a fierce devotion to what is most human.
Powerful, insightful, thought-provoking.
I am very glad you are on Substack and grateful for what you have done and are doing.
Echoing the other commenters! I cried reading this. A beautiful and powerful expression and embodiment of recursive selfless improvement
Thanks for sharing this Audrey. As ever, I appreciate your clear thinking and dedication to software that serves humanity. I agree that open evaluations and ability for people affected by a system to change the system have to be part of the new approach - in case it's useful, I wrote a piece arguing for this in government AI deployments https://www.publictechnology.net/2026/05/13/society-and-welfare/we-need-to-get-better-at-asking-questions-about-government-ai-systems/
Audrey, thank you so much for this. We need good, clear voices that have thought long and hard about where AI is taking us. The four freedoms and the Kami concepts are very easy to understand and easy to place inside other contexts. Please keep writing and adding to this space.
The “good enough ancestor” language is the line I’ll carry with me. A perfect ancestor locks the future into its own shape; a good enough one leaves a repair path. In a moment when so many AI systems are drifting toward centralization and inevitability, this essay reminds us that the most important freedom is the freedom to correct — and to keep the patch path open for the next generation. That feels like civic care in its most practical form.
こんにちは😃
はじめまして♪
宜しくお願いします🙇♂️