Sachi Kamiya

You are famously an optimist by discipline. Has anything since leaving the ministry worried you?

In March 2024, deepfake investment ads using Jensen Huang's face were all over Taiwanese social media. Retired engineers, schoolteachers, and shopkeepers were losing their savings, while platforms such as Meta collected revenue from every impression. What did you do?

The premise of this show is that AGI should be owned by humanity rather than a handful of companies. What does “owned” mean to you? What does it mean to own AGI?

I agree with the vision, but how can humanity reach consensus? One person may want AGI to embody one set of values, and another person may want something else.

Let's go into more detail about Kami . Your father is a political theorist and journalist. He started using ChatGPT for companionship and questions about his health, and worked something out without you telling him. What did he discover?

How did you build it? Did you have your own GPU? What model and architecture did you use?

Why did you call it Kami? Each part of the name stands for something, right?

In Japanese, Kami can mean god or paper. Was that part of the reference?

Maybe a guardian angel?

Most listeners interact several times a day with a model owned by a company they did not necessarily choose—OpenAI or Anthropic, for example. It is useful and polite, and may cost only $20 a month. You say there is something wrong with this arrangement. Why?

In five or ten years, will people continue using Claude and ChatGPT, or will they default to local models such as Kami?

Many companies call their models open. Some release only the weights; others use licenses that prohibit competition. Almost none release training data. You were involved in free software before these companies existed. Where is the line between open-source AI and marketing?

At Oxford, you and Caroline Green developed the “6-Pack of Care”—six design principles for civic AI. Could you give us the short version? What are the six, and why should people care?

I agree. We need a harness that can choose which model to use: sometimes an open model, sometimes ChatGPT. With Claude, for example, the system may be incentivized to use the most expensive model. We need an open-source counterpart so we are not locked into one model.

I need to try Pi. People have told me to use it, and I have tried other systems such as Hermes and OpenClaw. I'll add it to my list for today.

You signed the statement saying that mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside pandemics and nuclear war, and you stand by it. You have also written a piece looking back from 2040, describing how we decided we did not need to build a god.

To most people, those seem like different worldviews: one says this thing could kill us all; the other says it is not worth building. How do they fit together?

Do you publish your poems somewhere? If someone wants to read them, is it on your website?

We are heading toward the end, so let's finish with a rapid-fire round. One word for the state of AI governance.

The most overrated idea in AI safety.

The most underrated tool in civic tech?

Something you changed your mind about in the last two years?

Something you built that you wish had failed faster.

What would you do first if you became digital minister of the United States tomorrow?

One sentence for someone who feels like none of this is within reach.

Ultimately, it is about being present.

Audrey, we are at the end of the podcast. Thank you so much for your time and for coming on board.

My guest today is Audrey Tang. Audrey was Taiwan's first digital minister, serving from 2016 to 2024, and is now the country's cyber ambassador. Last year, Audrey won the Right Livelihood Award—the alternative Nobel—for using digital technology to renew democracy. Audrey, welcome to Open Commons.