About Third Things

Artificial intelligence is the most disruptive technology for human organization since the printing press. The printing press broke the Church's monopoly on knowledge and remade every institution it touched. Courts, legislatures, commerce, warfare, and more were reshaped over the course of centuries. AI is doing something comparable in years. It may not be noticeable yet, but how government decisions get made, how legal rights are adjudicated, how agencies write rules, and how lawyers practice will all soon be up for grabs.

That claim — that AI represents a genuinely discontinuous shift in how societies organize themselves — is the foundation of Third Things.

Third Things is not about the regulation of AI as a technology. Rather, Third Things is about preparing for a future that will cause us to reconsider what we consider to be the law.

Those who promise AI will save us are wrong. So are those who think we can wait it out. Neither boosterism dressed in legal language nor the old doctrines recited louder will close that gap. No one yet knows what will—but the only way to find out is to start looking.

What is that secret Third Thing? Let's find out.

Staff

Tim Hwang is an Editor at Third Things. He is the former General Counsel of Substack and currently serves as the General Counsel of the Foundation for American Innovation.

Sam Roland is an Editor at Third Things. He is a research fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, where he researches legal structures shaping technological innovation and regulatory reform.