CONCEPT
Progress Frame
The master frame that positions AI as the latest chapter in a history of technological advancement — generating policy positions in favor of acceleration, light regulation, and market-driven adoption.
The Progress frame is one of two master frames Lakoff's analytical method identifies as dominating contemporary AI governance discourse. Within this frame, AI is the latest chapter in a long history of technological advancement — writing, printing, electricity, computing, and now artificial intelligence — each expanding human capability, each met with resistance, each ultimately producing more prosperity and freedom than the world it replaced. Resistance to AI within this frame is structurally identical to resistance to every previous technology: understandable, historically recurrent, and ultimately wrong. The frame entails that the appropriate posture is acceleration — rapid deployment, minimal regulation, market-driven adoption — because history demonstrates that the gains from technological capability eventually outweigh transition costs. The frame generates specific policy positions with the reliability of a machine.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Within the Progress frame, regulation should be light because heavy regulation impedes innovation and delays the gains that history promises. Education should focus on adoption because the primary risk is falling