CONCEPT
The Two Azas
The structural duality of Raskin's career — simultaneously AI's most rigorous critic and an active builder of AI systems that decode <em>nonhuman animal communication</em>.
The two Azas names the structural duality that defines Raskin's public position: he is simultaneously one of the most vocal critics of the AI industry's current trajectory and one of its active practitioners, building transformer-based systems to decode animal vocalizations at the Earth Species Project. The duality is not hypocrisy. It is the most honest position available to anyone who understands both what AI can do and what AI is currently doing. The critic and the builder are the same person, holding the same framework, working from the same understanding that technology's effects are determined not by capabilities but by design, and that design is determined by the incentive structures within which designers operate.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Critics of Raskin have sometimes tried to discredit his position by charging that his warnings about AI are inconsistent with his own use of AI. The charge misses the structural argument. Raskin's position is not that AI should be stopped — he has explicitly rejected that framing — but that AI